


Losing Control

by msbutterfingers



Category: Powerpuff Girls
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, College, Coming of Age, Drama, Existentialism, F/M, Fluff, Good and Evil, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Grief/Mourning, Humanity, Mortality, Post-Canon, Romance, Science Fiction, Tragedy, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:23:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 197,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6053140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msbutterfingers/pseuds/msbutterfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During their seemingly regular first year of college, the Powerpuff Girls' and Rowdyruff Boys' lives change in ways they could have never imagined. "We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom." -Leo Tolstoy.</p><p>Companion to Hard to Control Myself, but can be read without it! Rated for language, action, mature themes, and some tame teenagery fun. Now complete!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is also posted on my FF.net account, under this same username. Recently, I decided to also give posting this here a try! I like the formatting of this website, so I figured, why not? 
> 
> Losing Control is technically a companion story to one of my other stories, Hard to Control Myself.  
> However, it's not exactly a sequel. This story is meant to stand on its own, and very little of the original story is brought up here. Meaning, you can read this one and get the general gist of what happened in the first one without actually having to go read it. Also, this story is vastly different from the other one, and readers of the 1st story might not enjoy this one in the same way, and vice versa. They're like night and day, to be frank.  
> So, no worries if you haven't read the other one! This one is meant to stand alone anyway.
> 
> I saw that the ratings system is slightly different here than on FF.net, so here I decided to give this an M rating. Just know that this story wobbles between a heavy Teen rating and a Mature rating. The kids are in college, after all.
> 
> I update on here and on FF.net at the same time.
> 
> If you're interested in the playlist that goes along with this story, with songs that go with each chapter, check out my LiveJournal for the pinned post. (Username 'butterfingersx', link is in my profile!)
> 
> So, let's get to it! Here's the prologue!

**Prologue**

* * *

 

_“Evil is just a point of view.” –Anne Rice_

* * *

 

**-Unknown POV, two years prior-**

Two teenagers sat on a spread picnic blanket.

The boy had red hair, a kind of grungy looking rusty red, unkempt in that sort of bed-headed style that was so popular with the human women. He was tall, peculiarly built, and seemed surprisingly more capable than a boy his age should be. The girl was a petite little thing, small boned and small faced, with winding coppery red hair all the way down her back. Despite her delicate appearance, though, she had a sort of aura of power surrounding her, and there was such strength and fire sweltering off of her that it put a familiar mix of disdain and a sickening pang of inferiority in my stomach.

I hated them. I loathed them. I despised them. It took everything in me not to leap down from my tree and strangle the living breath out of them—watch the life slowly leak from their unusual colored eyes.

Those two were the reason I had been forced out of my home. The reason I was forced to walk the streets, not as a renowned super villain, but as an animal, a starving animal with no purpose but to sleep and find food and poop.

_They ruined me._

The Powerpuff girl I had always hated. Her and her nauseating sisters were the bane of my fucking existence. Their whole life so far, I’d tried to get rid of them. I tried everything I could think of to kill them. Poisoning them with Antidote X, shooting at them with bullets, lasers, fire, even attempting to destroy their very foundation, their creator—Professor.  Yet, even as mere children, they made a fool out of me—shamed me and beat me to my core, threw me into prison countless times. Never in my life had I known true hatred until they had come into my life.

But the Rowdyruff. That Rowdyruff.

I _created_ him. He was my creation. He and his brothers I _created_ to destroy those eyesores, those repulsive creatures. The moment they were born, that’s what they knew they were supposed to do. I made them pure evil, made their souls ache for bloodshed and violence. That’s what they were made for.

I admit that I sometimes felt a fondness for them. I wouldn’t call it love necessarily; I wouldn’t think myself capable of that feeling. But sometimes I would look at them and feel proud. I’d look at them and feel proud of the monsters I’d created, feel proud knowing that they were mine and Him’s for the taking, and they would have to do whatever I said, whenever I said it, and they would have no choice.

But something happened. They grew up. And I started to notice more and more that they would defy me. They would ignore my orders entirely, do whatever they wanted instead. And it wasn’t until that fateful day in Citiesville when they abandoned me for good that I realized how far it had gone.

I was shocked, absolutely flabbergasted at what they were trying to do. I tried everything to get them to stay. I begged them. I threatened them and cursed them. But nothing worked. They didn’t listen to a word I said.

And it was then that I realized that they weren’t mine anymore, I had power over them no longer. So, I had no choice but to leave them alone. Never had I ever felt so powerless.

Months later, I received a message from Him. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time—long had our one-time alliance in raising the Rowdyruffs had been over. Just as most of the other villains in the area, he had eventually begun to ignore me. As far as they were all concerned, I wasn’t a villain anymore. Gone were my days of brilliant schemes and respectable efforts at killing the heroines that Shall Not Be Named. As far as they were concerned, I was past my prime. I was just a has-been old chimp with an overabundant intelligence level and a conceit that eventually caught up with me.

But when Him sent me that message, and a brief one at that, it made me forget all about earning my fellow villains’ respect again. It was something so massive, so mandatory, that Him had forgotten all about that too. His message read, simply, ‘ _The boys are in love with them.’_

I was so livid, all I could do was stare at those words as my hands trembled uncontrollably.

My vision of my perfect Creations was forever soiled.

My creations had betrayed me. Stabbed me in the back, shamed me in the worst way. They had abandoned me. And those wretched Powerpuffs were the reasons why they did. And did they leave me for those super-powered little brats because they wanted to obliterate them themselves? No. Not to destroy them, like I’d originally thought. _No_. It was _because they were in love with them_.

The very thing they were created to destroy. The bane of my very existence.

I didn’t know why they were doing this to me. Maybe it was to shame me, to sting me directly in the festering wound.

One other probable reason, which was less of a possibility, was that they really did have romantic feelings for them. That one I could hardly stand to think about without my face draining. I’d like to think that I made my Creations better than that, that they really were evil and that they were just doing this to spite me, or to make a point. That I could better handle, or even want.

Either way, I couldn’t let it continue. It simply would not do.

I silently climbed one limb up in my pine tree as the boy looked up suddenly, hearing it when a small twig I leaned against snapped off and tumbled to the ground.

The girl touched his shoulder. “You okay?”

He continued looking around for a moment, and just as he almost looked directly where I was, he turned back around to face her. “Didn’t you hear that?”

“Yeah,” she said, giving him a funny look. “But it was probably just an animal. We _are_ in the woods, you know.”

That seemed to sober him a little. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

She nudged him now, a little flirtatious touch that made me sick. “Why, haven’t you been camping out here before?” She teased. “Are you _scared_?”

The boy laughed briefly before nudging her back. “Shut up.” He grabbed her hand as she shoved back and held it in both of his. He gazed at her. “Hey, Bloss?”

“Hmm?” She was flushed a light pink.

He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. “I love you.” He leaned closer to her, and his face held this strange sort of grin, one that almost made him completely unrecognizable to me. I didn’t create him to _smile_. How did he learn to do that? He closed the space between them and locked his lips with hers in a brief kiss. I bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t curse aloud.

When they broke apart, the girl looked at him with such adoration, such fondness, that it took everything inside me not to scream in fury. She bit her lip and ran a thumb over one of his hands. “I love you.”

They kissed again and I retched, and I had to look away this time, or I was sure I’d throw up. It was disturbing. It was wrong, seeing them together like that. _So_ wrong. It was like seeing a beached whale in the middle of a busy downtown intersection. It was against nature, was something that just shouldn’t happen.

My overgrown claws gripped the tree trunk and dug into the bark, and it began to rip off in chunks. I tore my hands away from the trunk before I could split it in half in my rage.

No, this would not do. Not at all.

They would pay for this, for what they did to me. All of them.


	2. Breathe

**Chapter One**

**-Blossom’s POV, Present Day-**

I tapped my foot impatiently as I listened to the line ring again and again. My stiletto heel popped loudly against the wood floor. A few feet away, Bubbles was telling Buttercup all about her sorority, something I was positive that Buttercup cared nothing about.

Before the last ring could come, I hung up. I had already left two somewhat nagging voicemails, and I had no desire to leave another one. “Brick, you’re killing me here.” I muttered under my breath.

Buttercup, cutting Bubbles off mid-rant—something about the last spa night she’d had at her sorority house—looked up at me in the manner of a dog pricking its ears up at a weird sound. “He hasn’t picked up still?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

Bubbles, after briefly getting over her irritation that our green-eyed sister was no longer listening, looked at me in mild concern. “Seriously? Isn’t that the sixth time you’ve called him now?”

I sighed. It probably was, but then again, I’d been calling him for about an hour by this point, and I’d begun to lose track. “Yeah. I have no clue where he could be.” I looked down at my hot pink pencil skirt and black lace blouse, the date outfit that had somehow taken me at least two hours to pick out, an entirely painful process that I had no clue would be so difficult. Everything else looked too wrong, too frumpy, too casual, too plain. It was so hard to be a girl.

“Well, at least sit down until he gets here,” Bubbles offered. “Come talk with us.”

I looked at her, appalled. “I can’t sit down. It’ll wrinkle my skirt.”

Buttercup looked up at me dryly. “Brick won’t care if your skirt is wrinkled.” She paused, popping a grape into her mouth from the bowl on the table. “And if the wrinkles on your skirt is all he notices whenever he looks in that region, and not your ass, then we have an entirely different set of problems.”

Bubbles snorted, and I chose to ignore that comment.

I knew I was overreacting, of course, but I was anxious to see Brick again. Since our freshman year of college had started, we’d both been so busy, especially since the Rowdyruff brothers had opted to go to the University of Townsville instead of Warner University, as we’d chosen.

While Bubbles and Buttercup had both been busy with sorority and dorm parties, respectively, I’d spent my free time either studying in my dorm room or at the campus coffee shop, or going to visit Professor. All of that left little time to take visits to the UofT campus to go see my boyfriend, which sucked, but that was the repercussion of having a biochemical engineering major. We mostly had to talk on the phone, online, and with video chatting, but none of that really helped the dull ache of his absence go away. It was why I was so excited for this date, our first date in a while.

But Brick had told me the day before—Thursday—that he’d pick me up at six, which had gone by an hour and a half earlier. He’d never been so late for a date before, and it had started to make me wonder if I was the only one really anticipating this date.

I sighed and gave in, going over to our designated table in the large dining hall and sitting down at it. The dining hall was considerably full by then, filled by students eating and some occupying their tables with books instead of food, a low hum of chatter echoing off the walls in the area. I stared at my sisters’ empty plates and the small bowl of grapes sitting in the middle of the table, thinking about how I could’ve been eating a delicious dinner with my boyfriend by then.

As if she read my mind—she didn’t, none of us had mind reading powers, which was probably a good thing—Buttercup pushed the bowl towards me. “Might as well,” she said, shrugging. “No use starving to death while Brick takes his sweet time moseying over here.”

I didn’t even bother verbalizing my agreement; I reached for the bowl so fast. I was so hungry that my stomach ached with hollowness. I ripped three grapes off of the vine at a time and stuffed my mouth with them. “God, I’m hungry,” I mumbled around my food.

My sisters looked at me in sympathy, and Bubbles reached a hand over to my hair. “Your curls are falling out,” she pointed out, her face scrunching in disappointment. “Your hair was perfect when I did it an hour ago.”

Grabbing another four grapes from the bowl, I took a quick glance at the ends of my red hair, which tumbled down to my ribs. Sure enough, the curved ends were straightening out, looking more flat and strangled than pretty and bouncy. I ate the grapes in my hand, taking care not to bite my tongue in my haste. “Sorry,” I said between chews.

“Maybe I should have used more hairspray,” Bubbles murmured to herself, fluffing my hair to arrange it so it looked better.

“Can we talk about something else?” I asked, resting a hand under my chin. Maybe talking about something else would take away the anxiousness in my gut. “Buttercup, how’s your Wing Chun club going?”

She leaned back on her hands, a smirk spreading on her face. “Oh, you know. Too easy, as usual. Fun though.”

Buttercup had gotten into different types of martial arts later in high school, she’d found it a relaxing and useful outlet for her anger. Admittedly, it had taken her a while to learn to control her strength with her human sparring partners— there had been a few accidents—but in the end she had chosen Wing Chun as her favorite, as it involved more skill and wit rather than strength and power. As someone who used to only rely on her own brute strength, it challenged her more than the rest.

“I sparred with Butch the other day.” She continued. “Took him down in thirty seconds.”

“Why do I have the feeling that your sparring didn’t end with that kind of wrestling?” said Bubbles. I almost choked on my grape at the look Buttercup shot at her.

“Excuse you,” Buttercup said indignantly. “We were in public. I have standards, you know.” She lifted her eyebrows. “And besides, we have his dorm room for that.”

“Apparently,” I said. I reached for one of the unopened cans of Coke that Buttercup had bought for herself. She was always buying them in bulk so that she could take the extras up to our dorm room. “That would explain why you’re gone somewhere else seventy-percent of the time that you’re not at parties.”

She snorted. “Oh, like you’re Miss Innocence over there?” She shook her head at me. “I’ve seen the way Brick looks at you.”

“How does he look at me?”

“Like he’s seen you naked,” she said loudly, like it was the most obvious fact in the world. A few people walking by our table paused and looked at her in alarm. She winked at them tauntingly.

“ _Buttercup._ Would you keep it down?” Bubbles scolded, giving the random group a tight smile as they walked away and then glancing around to make sure nobody else had heard.

I felt a burn under my skin spread past my hairline and all the way down to my collarbones. In discomfort, I raised a hand to smooth across my forehead.  “No,” I said quickly. “No, no. He hasn’t. We haven’t done…that…yet.”

“Uh huh,” Buttercup nodded slowly. “Sure.”

“Really!” I exclaimed, feeling my skin burn brighter. This entire conversation was thoroughly embarrassing to me. It certainly shouldn’t have been, I was 19 now damn it, but I was presently redder than a strawberry. “We haven’t. It just…hasn’t been the right time.”

Bubbles looked suddenly shy about our topic of conversation too, a self-conscious little grin on her face. “Me and Boomer haven’t either,” she said to Buttercup. “We just want to be sure we were both ready.”

“Well that’s all fine and dandy,” Buttercup replied, an impatient look on her face. “But you guys have been dating them for about three years now, just as long as Butch and I.” She gestured at us. “How is that even possible? What, did the saint-like-restraint gene miss me, or something? I mean…haven’t you wanted to?”

I took that moment to pop open the top of my soda and take a large swig.

Bubbles cleared her throat, running her fingers through her blonde, recently cut chin-length bob. I missed her long hair, but this cut flattered her just as well. She still looked like a super model either way. “Can we please change the subject? I’d rather not talk about this right now. Especially not here.” She looked around again, making sure no one else had been listening in.

“Seconded,” I cut in, swallowing my soda. “Especially while I’m sitting here waiting for my super tardy boyfr—” My cell phone went off then, ringing with Bricks’ ringtone and buzzing and lighting up, scaring the living crap out of me. Quickly getting over it, I snatched my phone from the table, pressing the green ‘SEND’ button on the touch screen. “Hello?”

“I’m parked outside,” Brick said by way of greeting. “Give me a chance to explain in the car. I have a good excuse, I promise.”

Slightly relieved that he called me back, and yet still annoyed by how late he was, all I could do was say nothing and press ‘end’ with a displeased huff. I stood from the table then, bending to reach underneath the table to grab my purse.

“He’d better have a good excuse,” Buttercup said as if she’d heard Brick, or maybe she actually had. Advanced hearing, and all. “He’s really asking for it lately.”

As irritated as I was, I shook my head, stuffing my cell phone into my pink purse and then reaching for my pastel pink peacoat. “He’s just preoccupied with school,” I said in his defense. “I don’t think he can help it.”

“Boomer takes school seriously, too. But even when he’s running late to come see me, he makes the time to call. But Brick…” Bubbles pressed her glossed lips together and shrugged, leaving the rest of her sentence hanging in the air.

I sighed, not answering her. I tucked my hands underneath my now flat hair and pulled to free it from underneath my coat. “Leaving,” I said, turning to walk away. “Call you later.”

Bubbles waved, and Buttercup called after me, “Hey, slap him for me, will you?”

I teetered out of the noisy dining hall and towards the front entrance. As I pushed the doors open, I was ambushed by bitingly frosty air, and it knocked the wind out of me momentarily. For the middle of November, it was already unseasonably cold.

My breath puffing around my face in small clouds, I turned my head to peruse the area, and when I looked to the left, I saw Brick’s burgundy BMW stalled by the curb with the engine running. Despite my aggravated mood, I couldn’t help the flip that my stomach made.

As soon as I reached his car, I threw the passenger side door open and plopped down into my seat. I shut my door and sat for a moment, just staring out the windshield grumpily. The entire car was toasty warm, and it smelled like him, like spearmint and aftershave. After a few beats passed, I turned my head to look at my boyfriend, whom was already looking at me guiltily.

“Hey,” he said mildly. He wore a black trench coat over a red cotton shirt and black jeans, his hair grown slightly past his chin, shaggy, and gloriously sexy. He made it look so easy. Damn him.

I sniffed, looking away again theatrically. “Hello, empty car seat. When you see my boyfriend, can you tell him he’s ridiculously late?”

Brick managed a snort, and then sighed as he said, “I’m sorry, baby. I swear I did _not_ mean for this to happen.”

His apology already having loosened me up considerably, I glanced at him again with a smirk. “’I didn’t mean for this to happen’, he says.”

“Really, I didn’t!” He said lifting his hands and dropping them to slap down onto the steering wheel. I pinched my lips together to keep my smirk from growing into a smile. He continued. “My last class ran way late. The lecture was long enough to begin with, but then Professor Cavadini started talking about erosion and the effects it has on soil, and she went on this ridiculous hour-long tangent about the effects of pollution on economics and—”

Grabbing his chin, a bit stubbly now with the slightest bit of five o’clock shadow, I cut off his rant by pressing my lips to his tenderly. I broke the kiss, eyeing him with a smile. “I love it when you talk geeky to me.”

As I started to pull away, he put his hand at the back of my head, curling his fingers into my hair, and pulled my lips back to his, kissing me with such warmth that I’d forgotten why I was mad in the first place.

Pulling away finally, he settled back into his seat with a satisfied grin. “So am I forgiven, then?”

I feigned an exasperated sigh and tapped a finger to my chin, pursing my lips. “Maybe,” I said. Then, leaning down to free my feet of the stiletto heels for the car ride, I added, “But that’s what you get for taking Cavadini’s Agronomy course.”

Brick laughed then, and then glanced down to shift the car into drive to pull away from the curb. “I’m starting to realize that, thanks.” He looked at me sidelong. “I was going to buy flowers, but I didn’t have time. If it helps my case any, I think you’re real pretty.”

I smiled and waved a hand, feeling a blush creep onto my face. I was glad to know my hard work hadn’t been fruitless. “You’re not bad, yourself.” I lay back against dark leather seat with a sigh. “So, how has school been? How has life been? It feels like haven’t seen you in years.” 

“School’s good. Life’s…well. It’d be better if I could see you more.” We began driving away from my campus, then, and I felt myself let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“I know,” I said. “Workaholics, both of us. We need to make more time.” I reached my hand over to rub and squeeze his shoulder. “I miss my boyfriend.”

He glanced at me, the side of his mouth turning up in a half smile that looked sort of sad. “I miss you too.” His face turned solemn and he turned his gaze back to the road, his voice sounding softer. “You’re always on my mind, Bloss. I hope you know that.”

My heart picked up pace. Sometimes when he said things, things like that that made me forget how to breathe momentarily, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Even after being with him for three years, whenever I thought about how much I loved him, it overwhelmed me.

“I know,” I told him. It was all I could say.

He took a hand from the steering wheel and reached over to lace his fingers through mine. And as we drove to wherever our date would be, I leaned on his broad shoulder and drank in his company, the company I missed every moment we were away from each other.

* * *

 

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

“Buuuuuuubbles,” I whined despairingly to my sister on the other side of the room. “Get off the phooooone.”

By way of reply, Bubbles turned her back to me, pressing the phone closer to her ear. Rude. “What about Sunday, then? We could go for coffee. I wanna see you.”

I sighed dramatically, falling over face first onto Blossom’s pink comforter. I lifted my face from the bed then. “You talk to him on the phone _all the time_. I’m still sitting here, you know.” At her continued cold shoulder, I cupped my hands around my mouth, shouting, “Helloooooo?”

Bubbles looked at me sharply over her shoulder, covering the receiver with her hand. “Buttercup, shut up.” She turned back to her phone then. “Sorry, baby. Buttercup’s being annoying.” She said the last part loud enough so I could hear.

My mouth popped open, and before I could think twice about it, I leaned over, grabbed one of Blossom’s thousand sparkly, furry decorative pillows and hurled it at her head. It struck her in the back of the head so roughly that her head jerked forward, her blonde hair flopping into her face. She dropped the phone and nearly fell to the floor until she grabbed the wall for balance. My hands flew to my mouth. Whoops. Too hard.

She turned and looked at me slowly, her blue eyes looking at me through her hair so maliciously that I thought she might use her heat vision on me. “ _Ow_ ,” she said, managing to put enough poison in the one-syllable word that it made me cringe. She blew some hair out of her face. “What the _hell?_ ”

I held my hands up in defense. “Sorry!” I said. “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to throw it so hard! I just wanted your attention!”

“So come over and talk to me! Don’t _bludgeon_ me with a pillow!” She rubbed the back of her head, grinding her teeth. “What are you, ten?” I could hear Boomer’s tiny voice calling to her from her dropped phone, and Bubbles could too, because she quickly bent to retrieve it.

I leaned back against the rest of Blossoms pillows, folding my arms. “Well, _excuse_ _me_ for wanting to spend quality time with my sister without her boyfriend listening in.”

Before I had enough time to react or to even notice what she was doing, Bubbles launched the sparkly pillow back at me. Sailing through the air in a pale blue blur, it walloped me directly across the face, knocking me completely off of the bed and onto the hardwood floor with a loud thump.

“GOD,” I shouted, partly in resentment and partly in astonishment. Plus, it’s not like it felt that good either.

“Sorry about that, hun. Had to take care of a pest.” She cleared her throat loudly. “So, Sunday then? Okay. You’ll pick me up from the house?”

I crawled off the floor and went to stand in front of the mirror on the opposite wall to survey the damage. I grasped my ravaged cheek, scowling miserably. It glowed with a bright red welt. I gently prodded my nose ring with a finger, which happened to be on the same side of my face, and it throbbed in answer.

“I miss you too, sweetie. I’ll see you soon. Okay. Buh-bye.”

My hair didn’t look so hot either, but that was just because I hadn’t had a haircut in a while. It was beginning to get too long for my tastes. I tugged on the too-long ends, falling way past my shoulders by now. Suddenly, Bubbles appeared by my reflection.

I glowered at her in the mirror. “Look what you did to my face!” I complained, pointing at the welt that was, to my chagrin, already beginning to disappear, thanks to that damned advanced healing ability.

She just shrugged at it. “Always dishing it out, and never taking it,” she said with a smirk.

“Hey now,” I pointed at her reflection now, raising my eyebrows. “There’s a difference. _Mine_ was an accident. Yours was just pure cruelty.”

“Okay, okay, fine.” She said, leaning her head on my shoulder. She pouted her bottom lip. “I’m sorry I hurt your face.”

I looked at her sideways. “You’d better be.” I turned sharply then, grabbing her wrist and taking her back over to Blossom’s bed. We could’ve sat on mine considering it was only six feet away, but whenever Blossom was out I always preferred to sit on hers. It was plushy and soft like a giant pink cloud, and it was tons more comfortable than mine, with my flat black comforter, skull and crossbones blanket, and just two lime green pillows. It led me to think that perhaps I needed to go to one of those bedding stores that Blossom went to for her dorm decor. “We need to finish this movie. It was your idea to watch it in the first place.”

As we sat on the bed again—minus the one sparkly pillow that we’d turned into a deadly weapon—Bubbles settled back and grabbed the bowl of potato chips off of the bedside table. “Sorry, I just got distracted. Okay, press play.”

I leaned forward to grab the remote to the DVD player and pressed the play button. The movie on the TV started playing again, filling the room with sound.

Warner University was a private college, so that meant that the dorms were slightly nicer than the average college dorm. And not only that, but Professor had been willing to really splurge on our dorm supplies, even going as far as buying this television for Blossom and I and paying the college extra money so we could mount it on the wall. Since Bubbles lived in the sorority house with her super happy go lucky blondie sorority pals, she didn’t get a television, but that place was basically a mansion anyway, so it wasn’t like she needed it. But whenever she came over to our dorm to hang out, half the time she hogged it to watch her MTV reality shows. Annoying.

Only half-paying attention to the movie now, I watched as the leading lady got dipped over by the leading man, leaning in to kiss her.

“This movie’s sappy,” I announced.

Bubbles shushed me. “It’s romantic. Now shush.”

As the leading man grasped the woman’s hands, pleading her to run away with him, I sighed and glanced over at my cell phone on the bedside table. I reached for it, pressing the envelope icon on the screen. I scrolled through the inbox, looking for any recent messages that I’d missed. There were none.

“ _I love you_ ,” the man in the movie said. “ _I’ve always loved you_.”

“How long have you and Boomer gone without talking?” I asked my sister suddenly.

She turned to look at me, potato chip half frozen to her mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe half a week, once.”  She tilted her head. “Why?”

I shook my head, sighing. “No reason.”

After five minutes more of sort of paying attention to the sap-fest, I could restrain myself no longer. I went to ‘Butch’ in my contact list and pushed SEND. I glanced over to Bubbles again, and she just smiled at me and turned back to the movie. “Try to talk quietly so I can hear this,” was all she said.

Smiling slightly, even though she couldn’t see it, I turned away so my feet touched the ground and I was faced away from the television. I tapped my toes restlessly against the floor. After four rings, he finally answered.

“Hello?”

“So, what,” I started, now completely miffed and skipping greetings altogether. “I’m just supposed to call you first every time, or I don’t get to talk to you at all?”

“Hello to you too, cranky.” I heard him snort. “And by the way, I didn’t call because I thought you were busy.” He added defensively.

I rolled my eyes, trying hard to remain mad, but it was hard now that I’d actually begun talking to him and I was hearing his voice in my ear. “Busy my ass,” I sighed loudly into the receiver, sounding dramatic to my own ears, but I kept it up. “Admit it. You just don’t want to talk to me.”

Bubbles shushed me. I waved a flippant hand.

“Buttercup, listen. I swear, I don’t care if I was being eaten alive by a Chupacabra, or got trapped on an alien ship, or stuck in a room full of ninja assassins. I’d still want to talk to you on the phone.” I could hear a smile in his voice, as there always was toward me, forever patient with my temper. Somehow, this was enough to calm me again.

I couldn’t help it, I grinned widely now. “You’re stupid,” I said, my face burning. I knew he’d be able to hear me smiling too, but I didn’t care. He was a dork. But he was my dork.

He laughed. “I love you, too, Buttercup.”

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

Four hours later, we were parked in front of my dorm’s entrance again.

The difference was that this time, instead of sitting in my own seat, as soon as we had pulled up in front of the school, I’d scooted over the middle compartment and cup holders and curled up in Brick’s lap, leaning my head on his shoulder. His arms held me close to him in the cramped space, one hand resting on my shoulder and the other holding my legs, tracing patterns into the thick fabric of my skirt. Anyone could have looked in and seen, but neither of us cared.

There was only him and I, and the soft sound of our breathing and our fast-paced heartbeats.

I grasped the lapel of his jacket, snuggling my face further into the crook of his neck. I breathed him in, knowing I couldn’t for much longer. There was a 10 page College Chemistry I homework assignment to do, and a 15 page paper I had due in Academic Writing on Monday, and studying in just about every other class. It felt like the entire world was waiting for me outside that car, waiting for the moment when it could pile on top of my shoulders again. In here, it was warm, safe. Comfortable.

I let out a sigh. I lifted my face slightly, my lips brushing against his skin, and speaking into the pulse point underneath his jaw, I whispered, “I don’t want to go.”

And as predictable as it sounded, I really didn’t. Because I knew if I did it would mean not seeing him again for who knew how long. And I didn’t care if that made me that typical girlfriend who couldn’t be away from her boyfriend, because being around him wasn’t like an obsession. It was like a basic physical necessity, like breathing oxygen or drinking water, a necessary part of living for me. Even if every other aspect of my life changed in a second, if my entire world was different, there would always be him.

He turned his head to press his lips into my forehead, and then brushed his fingers across my hairline, smoothing my hair back. “I know, Bloss. I know.”

We stayed that way for a while, I didn’t know how long, but by the time I had gotten out of the car and into the cold again, it felt much too short.

As I approached the tall door to the dorm, my hand stayed frozen on the long handle, unable to pull it open again. I turned and looked over my shoulder, expecting Brick to have driven away already, but he was still stalled by the curb, his window rolled down and his eyes on me, watching me to make sure I got in safely.

I raised one hand in a wave, my gut beginning to ache with loss already, and before I could fly to his car again for one more kiss, _just one more_ , I threw the door open and forced myself to walk into the building.

As the door closed, I stopped on the other side, looking back through its large window, and I watched his BMW drive away.


	3. Still Into You

**Chapter Two**

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

“Bubbles, your boyfriend is _so hot_.”

“Seriously. Like, _smoking_. Congratulations.”

“When is he coming to pick you up? He’ll be here soon, right?”

“He’s so good looking. He looks like a supermodel, or something. Does he model, Bubbles?”

“Didn’t he used to be a super villain? I think I heard that on the news once.”

“Who cares if he was? He’s effing _gorgeous_.”

I listened to three of my housemates talk over one another to me as I struggled to pick out a pair of earrings to go with my long sleeved top. Looking at myself in my vanity mirror, I held up one silver hoop earring to one earlobe and I held up a long earring with peacock feathers dangling off of it to the other earlobe. “He should be here in five minutes or so,” I belatedly answered half-distractedly to whoever had asked that question. I couldn’t be bothered to know who it was right now, this required intense focus.

“You’re so lucky. I wish I had a boyfriend.”

“Didn’t you just break up with your boyfriend two weeks ago?”

“Well, yeah. But I want another one.”

One of my housemates, Kasey, who had light brown curly hair that went all the way down to her hips and green eyes, came over to me and leaned so she could see her reflection next to mine in the mirror. “Bubbles, does Boomer have any brothers?” She paused. “Definitely go with the peacock ones. It brings out the turquoise of your shirt more.”

Relieved to finally get some help, I sighed with a grin. “Thanks,” I said, setting down the hoop earring and picking up the other peacock earring. Then I answered, “Yeah, Brick and Butch, but my sisters are already dating them. Sorry.” They all groaned in disappointment and I bit back a laugh.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was getting ready for Boomer to pick me up for a coffee date. Seeing him was always the highlight of my week, although college as a whole wasn’t too bad. Since I had gone easy on the course load—unlike my sister Blossom had, who started off with taking as many difficult classes as she could, although she’d always done that—the work didn’t feel any different from High School.

And living in a sorority dorm had really made things fun so far, it was like living at home with my sisters, only we lived in an on-campus mansion and I had 10 times as many sisters to live with me. Living with this many girls had its share of drama, though—there were fights over blow dryers and boys and clothes at least once every few days—but for the most part it was awesome. I was just glad about how different it was from high school.

“Hey Bubbles,” one of my other housemates, Alexis, said, interrupting their current conversation. “How did you and your sisters start dating the Rowdyruff boys, anyway?”

I turned around, looked at her, and smiled, starting the long and complicated story the way I always did.

Whenever my sisters and I told the story, we were always candid about it. Our high school years were…interesting, to say the least. For the first two years, things were pretty normal, until towards the end of my sophomore year. The night after my sisters and I turned 16 years old, we went to our first teen club. And that’s when everything changed.

Our archenemies, the Rowdyruff Boys, had showed up to the same club, and since they hadn’t been up to any trouble there and were acting like normal teenagers, we had decided on avoiding them. Well, that plan had failed pretty quickly, and they ended up getting us alone. Logically, they should have tried to separate us from each other to do something sinister and villain-like, but that’s not what happened. In fact, what happened was the complete opposite of evil. That night, we all realized that we were head over heels for each other.

“To this day, I’m still not completely sure how it happened,” I admitted to them. It was the last thing I’d ever expected. Never in a million years did I imagine that I would be where I am now, in a long-term relationship with my once-evil counterpart. “Some say that the line between love and hate is thin. I guess maybe at some point, it had been crossed, and it had only taken that night to realize it—to see Boomer as the person he truly was, not the villain I’d been trained to hate.”

That wasn’t all, though. After that came the hardest part.

Their creator and ex-supervillain Mojo Jojo, who had told them to go find us that night to kill us, after finding out that his plan had failed, tried to start a new plan—an incredibly convoluted plan to take over the world, as per usual. He dragged the Rowdyruff brothers to Citiesville, and after months of staying there and doing absolutely nothing, the boys decided they’d had enough of Mojo altogether. They kicked him to the curb. After months of thinking and careful consideration, and all of them realizing that living that way wasn’t fulfilling to them anymore, quit their lives as supervillains.

Meanwhile, though, me and my sisters had been going through absolute hell.

Considering they had just left without a single word to us, we’d all assumed we’d been dumped in the worst way possible. Not only did we have to deal with depression after being ‘dumped’ that way, but then when they returned, it actually got worse. The boys had decided, unanimously, to do us a favor by staying out of our lives for good—including trying to force us to hate them.

Looking back, this was probably the most painful time of mine and my sisters’ lives. They had tried everything they possibly could to drive us away, especially Brick, who had really crossed the line a few times, and Buttercup and I haven’t ever quite forgiven him for that. But in the end, we all just couldn’t stay away from each other.

Thus began about three years of ups and downs since then.

Finishing up the story, I concluded, “It’s certainly been interesting being with a Rowdyruff Boy. We’ve had our issues, but he’s also the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I wouldn’t trade him for the entire world.” My housemates, who had all sat down on my bed to listen to the story, chorused in ‘aww’s and squeals, and I blushed hard, laughing.

Startling me out of my embarrassed laughter, my cell phone buzzed with a text message notification. I checked the message and then immediately jumped up from the vanity. “Crap, he’s here!” I looked down at my bare feet. I’d been so busy reminiscing that I hadn’t picked out my shoes yet.

“Here, wear my flats!” Kasey said, tossing me her dark blue flats. “They’ll look cute.”

I smiled at her gratefully. She was always so nice and helpful, she reminded me of Crystal in that way, whom I hadn’t talked to in almost two months. I missed her. “Thanks Kasey,” I said, quickly slipping her shoes on my feet, which thankfully fit, then threw on my light jean jacket. After checking my lip gloss in the mirror and snatching up my purse from my bed, I said a fast goodbye to my housemates and dashed out.

As I exited the house, I immediately spotted Boomer’s blue Audi—which he’d stolen when he was fourteen, something that I had admittedly never gotten adequately upset over—parked out in front. Even after having the car for so many years, it still looked almost brand new and well taken care of, which I had to admit was pretty impressive.

I opened the car door, and as I sat down in the passenger seat and closed the door I was immediately ambushed with two big hands engulfing my face and a sweet, minty kiss.

Making a noise of surprise, then giggling, I kissed back and then pulled away. “Well, hello to you too.”

Boomer winked, leaning back and grinning his wide grin that made me melt. “How’s my princess doing on this fine Sunday?” He ran a hand through his tousled blonde hair. In light jeans and a snug, long-sleeved pull over navy sweater that hugged his muscles in all the right places, he looked like something straight out of my daydreams.

“Good. Better now.” I leaned over the armrest between us, kissing him on the cheek. He smelled so good. “How’s my prince?”

“Right now? Fantastic,” he said, shifting the car out of park and into drive. He drove us away from the sorority house and away from Greek road, and when he turned onto the main road, he reached for my hand to lace his fingers through mine, the way he always did when he was driving. “So, I was thinking we could go to another café downtown instead of our usual place between our campuses. Is that okay?”

I perked up at this, nodding. “That sounds nice, actually. What’s it called?”

“It’s called Moriah’s Café. They just opened last month. Their coffee is supposed to be great, and they also have gourmet cupcakes, which I thought you would really like.” He glanced over at me quickly, smiling shyly. “Does that sound good?”

I almost swooned. He was the most adorable boy in the entire world. “That sounds perfect! I can’t wait.” I bit my lip and squeezed his hand in mine. “You know me so well.”

Proud of himself, he grinned. “I know.” He nodded at my phone, which was in my other hand. “You can look at their website for all of their cupcake flavors. They make them by the order, so they’re always fresh and warm.”

I unlocked my phone screen. “Good idea,” I said. Searching for their official website, then pulling it up, I perused their variety of cupcakes. They had so many, at least 40. All of them were unique too, ranging from almond lemon, cappuccino, earl grey, to pumpkin spice and about a million more. As I was eyeing the apple pie flavor, the car came to an abrupt stop.

Boomer groaned. “No,” he lamented.

I looked up from my phone, startled and about to ask what was wrong, but as soon as I looked up, I had my answer. A traffic jam. An amazingly huge one. I rolled down my window, leaning my head out of it to see how far up it went. It was endless, winding all the way past the bridge and into downtown. I sat back into my seat. “Yikes,” I said.

“It goes on forever,” Boomer complained, having just looked out his window too.

“No kidding.” I sighed. “Maybe this is a sign we should take up flying everywhere again. Cars are so inconvenient.”

“Damn it.” Boomer slammed a hand against the driving wheel and then looked at me guiltily. “Sorry, baby. I had no idea traffic would be so bad today. It might take us forever to get there.”

I smiled at him sympathetically. “It’s ok, babe. Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad I’m spending time with you.” I reached for his hand again, lacing our fingers together. I looked out through the windshield again, frowning slightly. “I wonder what could have caused such a bad traffic jam like this.”

He sighed this time, rolling his eyes. “Probably just some tiny traffic accident. They’re probably stopping to look at it, you know how people can be.”

I nodded, my lips pressed together, and then my phone bleeped and I looked down at it. There was a push notification. Opening it, my heart skipping a beat, I realized which app it was for. It was from the customized Hotline app that Mayor and Ms. Bellum had made me and my sisters download onto our phones.

They considered it a modern update of our old hotline they used to alert us of crimes when he were kids—the red and white telephone with a face, which was kept in all of the places we were the most. The app always notified the person closest to the crime by using the current location of our phones, which was pretty cool. Ms. Bellum’s tech team was currently working on a separate version for the boy’s phones, so that our boyfriends wouldn’t have to rely on us telling them about crime alerts. It was more convenient than our original hotline, I’d give them that. But getting notifications while I was, say, texting someone, or talking on the phone, or already busy doing something, was kind of annoying.

I read the alert on the app’s screen, paused, then read it again thoroughly, making sure I saw it right. “Oh, crap.”

Boomer glanced over at me. “What?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but before I had the chance to, the answer came: a deafening _BOOM_.

A single, mighty boom to the ground far away, cars far away jumping up into the air and then landing on their tires again, the same happening to the cars directly in front of us, and then ours, bouncing off the road and then landing, and then the cars behind us, and then the cars behind them, all in perfect succession. And then immediate chaos. Noise swirled around us as people began to panic.

Tensed up and senses sharpened, breathing hard, I turned to Boomer, who had shifted into high alert mode, too. “I just got an alert on my Hotline app. ‘Emergency alert: Large monster causing chaos downtown’.” I showed him the alert on my phone’s screen. “That noise was so loud, though. It must be huge. What do you think it is?” I knew he could hear me just fine, but I still felt like I had to shout to be heard. People around us had begun shouting out their windows, jumping out of their cars, leaving them behind and running in every direction.

“I don’t know,” Boomer said, reaching to undo his seatbelt and then quickly undoing mine for me. “Let’s go find out.”

He opened the driver’s door, leaving the car, and before I opened the passengers’ door and followed suit, I reached for my earrings, quickly taking them off, knowing it would be a mistake to try and fight with them in my ears. I left them in his car’s cup holders, then shoved my phone into my jean pocket as I left the car.

As I shut the door, Boomer was already standing by the car, staring up toward downtown as frightened citizens fled around him. I quickly came to stand beside him, my senses on high alert as I inspected the skyline of downtown with him.

“I don’t see anything. Do you?” I asked him under my breath. He shook his head.

For about a minute, besides the people around us, there was mostly silence. Then, out of nowhere, the most blood curdling sound I had heard in a long time—it was like a mix of a wasp’s buzzing, human whispers, and radio interference. Then, _BOOM_. Another ear-splitting slam on the ground, and the cars jumping off the road again in a ripple effect. The ground shook under our feet, and I grabbed Boomer’s shoulder for balance. The cars around us lifted up and then slammed back down again—I watched the car next to me come down, and as it slammed on its tires, the windows developed fissures in the glass. A little girl watched me from the other side of the backseat window with wide eyes, hugging her stuffed bunny against her. I tried to manage a reassuring smile at her.

Looking away, and beholding all the cars, some of them damaged, a tremor ran through me, both fear and anticipation. I looked at Boomer just as he looked at me. At the same time I lifted into the air, he squatted back slightly for some momentum, and with two burning streaks of blue at our heels, we were off.

Not having flown so fast for a while, it took me a few seconds to get used to the sensation; it felt like the air was grabbing at me, pulling through me, trying to hold me back. My eyes watered, and my stomach felt like it had dropped into my knees, but after the first few seconds of disorientation, I found my pace and focused.

Side-by-side, we flew past the bridge and into downtown, and as we arrived, Boomer and I saw what we were looking for at the same exact time. We stopped in our tracks, levitating high in the sky as we stared down in shock. I gagged in disgust.

The creature—whatever this _thing_ was— was completely white in color, and at least 20 feet across. It looked like a mutant insect of some kind. Its actual body made up the smallest part of it, only five feet across maybe, but that wasn’t the biggest area of concern. That wasn’t the repulsive part. The grossest part were its _legs_. Giant, spindly, furry, bending at the knee, making their collective height at least 15 feet high. And there were so many of them—I squinted, counting. One, two, three…twelve. _Twelve legs_.

Just as I thought I couldn’t be more disgusted by it, it launched into action—literally launched. It _jumped_ into the air with all twelve legs. Boomer and I rose up higher, moving out of the way as it sailed past us into the air and seemingly disappeared high above the clouds. Then with a giant sudden _slam_ , it landed again, 3 blocks away, demolishing the entire side of a low-sitting parking garage. I jumped, grabbing Boomer’s arm.

I swallowed back some nausea. Great. Not only was it a giant mutant arachnid of some sort, it was a _jumping_ one. Awesome. Just what I needed today. “I’m gonna be sick,” I muttered.

“How the hell do we fight this thing?” Boomer exclaimed, staring at it with stupefaction. “At this rate it’s going to jump all over town and crush half the city.”

I was still latching onto his arm. “I hate spiders,” I whined in repugnance. Almost on cue, it launched up into the sky again, and I closed my eyes, waiting for its noisy impact on the ground again. Sure enough, it smashed down again, and I opened my eyes quick enough to see it landing on a bunch of parked cars two blocks away. All of their alarms began going off, wailing all across the neighborhood. Trying to forget my squeamishness for a second, I turned to Boomer. “We have to get this thing away from here.”

Boomer gestured at it, looking over at it in aversion. “And how do you suggest we do that?”

I shrugged, grimacing and watching it shoot some black-colored web onto the building it was next to. “I don’t suppose you have some giant flies to spare? Maybe a cricket we can lure it with?”

He pretended to search his pockets. “Fresh out of those, sorry.”

I frowned hard, not wanting to say this but knowing we didn’t have any choice. “I know what we have to do,” I said with some hesitation.

He looked at me. “What?”

“We have to make it mad. Really mad.” I stared up at him grimly. “Enough that it’ll chase us until we can lure it somewhere that we can crush it before it crushes anything else, or any _one_.” I took a deep breath, reaching for his hand. “You up for it?”

He squeezed my hand, kissing it encouragingly. “I’m right with you.”

Looking into each other’s eyes as I mouthed the countdown silently—“three, two, one,”—we let go of each other, hurtling toward it. Feeling the heat building in the back of my head and then the backs of my eyes, I released it, shooting searing laser beams directly at the beast as we came upon it. It let out another one of its ungodly noises again—buzzing and static and whispers all at the same time. It stomped down only one of its legs, and the ground shook.

I sped toward it, soaring closer and closer until I was directly under it and I found what I was looking for. Eight eyes. Only they weren’t black, insect-like eyes, they were blue—terrifyingly similar to human eyes, and instead of staring unseeingly, they stared down directly at me, glaring at me as I flew underneath it. Which was exactly what I wanted. I waved at it mockingly, and then I unleashed my lasers again, getting it directly in the eyes.

I sped away as it let out its noise again, this one sounding the most like a scream than the other ones, and it faltered, all twelve legs stumbling around.

Boomer had flown around to its other side, aiming his lasers at the bottom of its legs. One of the legs lashed out towards him, trying to swipe him out of the air, but he nimbly avoided getting it by it as he aimed a swift kick to the limb.

The creature screamed again. It was working. I kicked another one of its legs, and it swung at me with another one. The giant thing was quick enough to smash into my side, and I went flying down towards the ground. Landing on a car, the metal groaning and bending and caving in to fit my form, I grit my teeth and shouted at the hard impact, my eyes shutting.

Opening my eyes again, and seeing the car’s owner’s standing on the sidewalk right next to the car and looking at me in alarm, I regarded them apologetically. “Sorry about that,” I said, then looked back up at the monster. Boomer was flying around in circles to distract it, but it kept swinging at him, trying to take him down, too. I had to get back there. I looked at the bewildered middle aged couple again. “It’s too dangerous here. Go someplace safe! Hurry!” They took off running, and picking myself up from the heap of metal that used to be their car, I took off into the air again.

I was back at Boomer’s side in no time, and he looked at me with wide-blue-eyed concern. “Baby, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Fine,” I told him curtly, pausing to shoot heat vision at the monster again. It shrieked a whisper-y, static-y shriek. “Just a little mad.” Rearing back with my right fist, I aimed a punch at the leg nearest me.

In retaliation, it swung another leg at me, the limb barreling at me like a giant white tree trunk. I grabbed it from the air with both hands, brought my knee upward swiftly, and with a sickening crack, the furry leg snapped into two pieces. I flew back abruptly as disgusting black blood flooded out of it and onto the ground. Thankfully, none of it had gotten onto my clothes.

“Aw, dude, gross,” Boomer said, staring at the black stuff and looking a bit unsettled.

This time, the creature roared a static-sounding roar, all of its knees buckling as it nearly dropped onto the ground. I flew underneath it again to make sure it saw which direction I was going, and it scowled at me with all eight of its eyes and made a static-y hissing sound.

“Come on!” I yelled back at Boomer, and as he came to fly next to me, the creature started its clumsy chase after us, each remaining limb coming down against the ground with a slam, the one broken leg dragging uselessly behind it.

As we soared away from it and it pursued us, making the ground rumble and shake, it knocked down some street lights and flattened some cars below, leaving a mighty mess in its wake. It kept shooting black web in our direction, and we ducked out of the way. It landed on buildings and streetlights and dangled off of signs and stoplights, making the surrounding area look like a Halloween store exploded everywhere. Looking down, I saw frightened people running in frenzied circles and dashing out of the way to avoid being crushed.

I was shaking my head, looking at Boomer in panic. He had an unsure look on his face, too.

“This was a terrible idea,” I said to him. “We need to do something else. Plan B, follow my lead!” My boyfriend nodded, and I moved out of the monster’s line of view. I flew high above the top of it, shouting down to Boomer, “Sweetie, cover your ears!”

Not quite catching my meaning at first, it clicked and then he immediately nodded in understanding. Ducking out of the monster’s line of view, too, he came to levitate behind me, gave me a thumb’s up and crashed his hands down over his ears quickly.

Not having done this in a while, I followed through the steps. I breathed in deeply, holding in all the air that I could and prepared my throat for the strain. Pausing for a split second, with all of my might, I let out a massive, eardrum-shattering, super-sonic scream. I could feel the molecules in the air in front of me vibrating faster than usual, and the ground shook once more—only this time, it was because of me. Buildings rumbled, streetlamps shook, and windows shattered. As usual, when I did this, my ears kind of protected themselves from the noise—there was a clogged pressure inside of them. The creature wasn’t so lucky.

All of its legs collapsed at once, the sonic force of my scream too much for it to handle, and it twitched violently, jerking unnaturally as if it were dizzy.

I stopped screaming and spun around to look at Boomer, who was cringing as he dropped his hands from his ears. We nodded at each other at the same time, then swooped down in the air toward the monster. I grabbed one giant leg with each arm as Boomer managed to grab three, and we took off into the air, carrying it away before it could snap out of its daze.

Within moments, no longer disoriented by my scream, the giant thing began to struggle as we flew with it, trying to throw us off of its legs. I gritted my teeth through the strain of trying to fly straight. “Where should we land? We have to find some place that’s open and clear of any people. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m touching this thing.” I shouted to Boomer, groaning. “Gonna need a thousand showers after this.”

“There!” Boomer called to me suddenly, and I looked at him. He nodded toward the patch of yellow and orange some blocks away that was Townsville Park.

“ _Yes_ ,” I said, forcing my muscles to push through the air faster. “Perfect!” Sweat began to form on my forehead, and I just _knew_ it was messing up my makeup.

Increasing both our speeds, we quickly arrived there. Finding the most abandoned area of the park, we flung the thing to the ground covered in dying grass and orange and brown leaves, and it landed with its legs splayed. It scrambled, trying to get up.

I shouted to Boomer as I turned away, “Let’s finish this. Hold it, make sure it stays down. Don’t let it start to jump again. Give me thirty seconds!” He nodded, and I sped away through the air, my eyes scanning the area quickly, looking for _something_ I could use. Then by the park’s lake, I found one—a huge boulder.

Landing, picking the very large rock up between my hands, lifting it with a grunt and heaving it up high over my head, I sped back to where Boomer was holding the monster’s body into the dead leaves as its legs spasmed and flew about, trying to knock him off. “Bubbles,” Boomer shouted in warning, “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up!”

I flew up directly above them and yelled, “ _Move!_ ” Boomer looked up, seeing me holding the boulder above my head, and took off out of the way.

With a loud shout, I flung the boulder down at the creature, and just as it began to get up on its legs again, the rock came down onto its tiny body, crushing it under its mighty weight with a nauseating crunch as it released one last whisper-static-buzz. Black, acidic goo exploded out from underneath the rock. The thing’s legs came up, stiffened, then in one final movement, curled inward toward its body in the wrong direction.

Grossed out, I stared at it and floated down to the ground just as Boomer did. Noticing something on one of its legs, I looked closer. There was some sort of symbol branded into it, three circles overlapping each other like—oh, what was it called? Something we’d learned about in school a long time ago…a venn diagram. Yeah, that’s what it looked like. I thought about it for a moment, trying to remember if I’d ever seen that symbol on a monster before. Not recalling ever seeing it before, I brushed it off.

I tore my gaze away from it and looked down at myself. Despite my efforts to stay clean, some black blood from the monster had splattered onto my clothes. I looked down at it in repulsion, whining, “Dammit. I love this jacket.” Sighing, I continued, “Well. At least that’s done with. Haven’t seen a pest like that around here in a while.” I wiped the sweat off of my forehead with the back of my hand and grimaced at it. “And I don’t think I would care to again anytime soon.”

“I don’t think I’d care to, either.” Boomer laughed a hearty laugh, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me against his side. His hair was sticking up in random places, and there was some smudgest of black on his face. “Some Sunday date, huh?”

Relaxing, I laughed with him then, starting to lean away. “Don’t, I’m all dirty.”

“Oh, come on. Like I care,” he said with another laugh, and then he wrapped his other arm around me too, hugging me to his body and attacking me with kisses all over my hair and face.

“Okay, okay!” Giggling even harder, I finally shoved him off. “You’re dirty, too. You probably have spider germs all over you.” I looked at his navy sweater, and it, too, was splattered with black. Such a nice sweater. Such a shame.

“Probably.” Snorting, he said, “But, hey. I think we have more than earned some coffee and cupcakes today,” he paused, offering me his arm. “Shall we, my love?”

I grinned, linking my arm with his. “We shall,” I said.

We flew back to where his Audi was still parked far away amidst the multiple other abandoned cars, and it had thankfully— _miraculously_ —survived with no damage at all. We hopped into it, drove and swerved past downed streetlamps, damaged cars and numerous police cars and firetrucks, eventually arriving at Moriah’s Café at least an hour later.

Ignoring bewildered stares in our direction at our disheveled and dirty appearances, sitting in that little café together, drinking fancy coffee and eating pretty cupcakes, we finally enjoyed our no-longer-laidback Sunday afternoon date.

* * *

 

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

“So, this is what you do all day? Fix up cars in this garage like you’re John Travolta in Grease?” I said to my boyfriend, who currently was looking under the hood of a vintage mustang.

Even for being in a car garage, he looked super good. The sleeves on his dark green, plaid shirt were pushed up to his elbows, and he was wearing the black jeans that I liked on him. Butch leaned away from the car’s engine, looking down at me sitting on a pile of tires. “First off, I didn’t know you liked musicals. And second, no, this is just one of my elective classes.”

I’d come over to the University of Townsville campus on a whim, mostly because it had been almost a whole week since Butch and I had last seen each other. I hated to admit it, and of course I didn’t admit it to him, but I’d been going stir crazy. I’d missed Butch Jojo and his dark green eyes and his eyebrow ring and his stubbly face and dumb deep voice. I’d also missed his arms around me.

So I called him, demanding to know where he was, and his directions lead me to this garage where his car mechanic class was taking place. There was less than 10 people in the class, and his teacher and classmates didn’t seem to mind that I was there. Everyone was absorbed in their own work. It was such a laid back class compared to some of my classes. It made me wonder if I had chosen the wrong school.

“You know I don’t like musicals.” I replied. “I like thriller, action, and slasher movies.” I rolled my eyes. “The only reason I’ve even seen Grease is because Bubbles and Blossom went through this stage in middle school where they watched Grease every Saturday for like a _year_. I know every song by heart and it’s completely not my fault.”

After a while, though, I’d started to think that the Greasers were kinda hot with their leather jackets and tight pants and rockabilly hair and whatnot. But no one would _ever_ know that.

Butch was laughing. “Yeah, that sounds like your sisters.” I began to take a swig out of my water bottle as he continued, “That’s better than Boomer’s Mary Poppins phase as a kid, at least. Watched it twice a day.” I spit my water everywhere. Butch laughed even louder.

“Oh my _God_ ,” I sputtered between choked laughs. That had been the kind of dirt I’d wished I had on Boomer back when I hated him.

Butch’s professor shot us a dirty look for the first time the entire class. “Hey, keep it down, there. Focus on your work.”

“Sorry,” Butch and I said at the same time.

His professor took a double take at me, squinting, and then he said, “Do you go here?”

I straightened up as Butch froze, and I responded casually, “Oh, yeah. I just decided to drop by to see my boyfriend before my…” I paused momentarily, thinking, and then finishing, “before my philosophy class.” There. That was convincing, right? I looked like someone that would take philosophy, right? Maybe?

He nodded slowly, like he didn’t believe me, but then he turned back to the engine he was working on. I silently breathed a sigh of relief, and looked over at Butch with wide eyes. He gave me a sly grin, a look that said ‘you’d better not get me in trouble’ and then started work under the car’s hood again.

I stood up from the pile of tires and went to stand next to him so that I could talk quietly. “So, did you hear about that monster that Bubbles and Boomer fought yesterday?”

Butch began to tighten something with his wrench. He grunted, saying, “Yeah, I heard. Heard it was pretty nasty.”

“Bubbles said the thing was disgusting. They showed it all over the news, too. And it trended online. It looked like a giant mutant spider.” My face scrunched in disappointment. “I wish I was there to see it. I haven’t seen any real action in forever.”

He wiped his hands on a nearby rag, covering it in black grease. “Last time I checked, you were getting plenty of action from me.”

I smacked him hard on the back, and he cackled. “What are you, fourteen? You know what I meant.” I bit back a laugh. I would not laugh at his stupid pervy joke.

“I know, I know.” He pointed at the toolbox by my feet. “Hand me that 7/16, would you?”

Locating the size wrench he’d requested, I picked it out of the box and handed it to him. “But really, though. I miss fighting. You know, we should go find out where that thing came from. Make sure there’s no more to take care of,” I brought my hands together, cracking my knuckles in anticipation.

Butch stopped working for a second, giving me a side eye with a smirk. “Someone has some pent up frustration,” he said. “Did you really miss me that much?”

I folded my arms, rolling my eyes, refusing to answer that embarrassing question. “I just haven’t fought in forever. I mean like, _real_ fighting. Where I don’t have to hold back, like in Wing Chun club. It’s no fun sparring with humans all the time.” I unfolded my arms and nudged him. “Spar with me.”

“No way in hell,” said Butch, turning back his attention to whatever he was fastening. “Not while you’re in one of these moods. I’ve made that mistake before. Go for a fly, or something. That should take the edge off.”

I sighed. “You’re right, that might help.” I checked the lock screen of my phone for the time. “I should go anyway. It’s getting late, and I told Blossom I would meet her for lunch.”

Butch faced me and stood up straight then, his full height towering over mine. He set aside his wrench. “Kiss before you leave,” he said.

I leaned around the car hood, looking at his classmates, who were still diligently working on their individual projects. I turned back to him and groaned quietly. “ _Here?_ ”

“They’re not looking, they don’t even care. Come here.” He smirked openly, pointing to his own lips. “Right here. I know you want to. Almost a whole week without these lips? Come on. You’re dying to kiss me.”

I rolled my eyes again, stepping closer. “Get over yourself. You’re not _that_ great at kissing.” Total lie.

Amusement flashed in his eyes. “Oh, really?” Very slowly, Butch reached down, putting two fingers through two of my belt loops. Tugging on them, he pulled me to him, and met my lips with his. Slow, short, but burning and filled with all the indication that he’d missed me just as much as I had missed him. After a few moments, he broke the kiss, and gazed down at me, smug and really hot. “How was that?”

I gulped involuntarily. “Damn you,” I said under my breath.

He smiled a teasing smile and then leaned down again, pulling on my bottom lip gently with his teeth before letting go of me. “Don’t be a stranger, shorty. Video chat tonight?”

I pulled away, winking at him as I turned to leave.

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

I was typing away on my laptop when Buttercup finally entered our favorite diner near campus. “You know, Red, you’re not actually required to do homework during lunch.” She plopped down into the booth I had picked, directly across from me.

Saving my latest addition to the essay I was writing, I snorted. “I know that. But I want this essay to be perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Miss Perfect wants her schoolwork to be perfect, too. What a surprise.” Buttercup took off her reflective sunglasses and shimmied her black leather coat off her shoulders. “But can you chill out for now? I came here to hang out with you, not talk to the back of your laptop.”

“Alright, fine.” Saving my document one more time, I closed my computer, giving her a sarcastic smile. “Happy?”

My sister gave me a wider sarcastic smile in return. “Yes.” She took her dark green scarf off last, which she’d gotten as a gift from her boyfriend a year ago. “I went to see Butch just now.”

Turning slightly to gesture to the waitress that we were ready to order, I turned back to Buttercup, looking at her in alarm. “At the UofT campus? Wasn’t he in class?”

“Yeah, it was cool though. His professor let me stay there, let us talk and everything,” she said vaguely. I had a feeling she was leaving out part of the story, but I let it pass as she continued. “I didn’t stay too long, anyway. Just wanted to see him. A week felt like forever.”

I gave her a look of understanding. “I know the feeling,” I said.

The waitress came by to take our orders. I ordered the ultimate breakfast platter with strawberry pancakes, because one of the reasons I loved this diner so much was their all-day breakfast menu, which I always ordered from. I could never resist breakfast. As usual, Buttercup got the steak lunch with extra steak fries.

“So, how’d your date with Brickie-dearest go the other night?” Buttercup asked as we sat waiting for our food. “Did he forget his wallet? Get spinach stuck in his teeth? Something else equally disastrous as showing up an hour and a half late?”

I sighed heavily. “Buttercup, can you not? He felt really bad about that. The rest of the night went great. And I’d rather not sit here and listen to you rag on my boyfriend.” Who I really, _really_ missed already, I added mentally. I’d already been in a somewhat bad mood all day because of that, and she wasn’t helping.

She held up her hands defensively. “Okay, sheesh. Sorry.” She squinted at me. “Have you eaten at all today? Is that why you’re so crabby?”

Well, okay, that too. My stomach let out a long growl before I answered, “I woke up late this morning, so I had to skip breakfast. I’m starving,” I admitted.

She looked at me softer, then. “Sorry,” she said. If there was one thing Buttercup could sympathize with, it was being really hungry.

I went on, “Plus, I couldn’t stop thinking about that creature Bubbles and Boomer fought yesterday. I should have been there.” I pulled out my phone from my pocket, double checking that it was on vibrate instead of silent. No new notifications.

“I feel guilty, too. Plus, I hate that I missed out on all the fun,” she admitted. She gave me a look. “As if you would have ditched homework for a fight, though.”

I looked at her indignantly. “I would have if I’d known the city were in danger. Don’t be ridiculous.”

She laughed to herself, amused. “I know, Pinky. I was just messing with you.” Her leer fading, her face turned pensive. “I wonder where it came from, though. It couldn’t have just come out of nowhere.”

I thought of that for a moment, and then I shrugged. Though it had been a long time since there had been a monster attack on the city, it could have come from anywhere. But there was no use wondering about it now, anyway. It was gone now. “Who knows,” I said. “Bubbles and Boomer took care of it, though. Don’t worry about it too much. It’s over now.”

Soon, our food arrived at our table, and the conversation was immediately forgotten. We both dug in, continuing to talk and eat and relax a little bit before we both had to leave and attend all of our afternoon classes for the day.

After our talk, the creature issue didn’t come up in my mind again.

Not until the next day’s events.


	4. Burn

**Chapter Three**

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

My alarm sounded off. I groaned. No. Stop. Shut up. Go away.

I should have known that I’d pay for how late I’d stayed up video chatting with Butch the night before, and that I’d seriously regret it when I had my only early class on Tuesday mornings, but I didn’t. And now I was lying in bed, covering my ears even though my stupid advanced hearing made the action pointless to do, and hating my life.

Although, I wasn’t gonna lie, that video chatting session had been…fun. No regrets there. I was lucky that Blossom had been studying in the library until late, otherwise she would’ve caught us, which would have been mortifying. That kind of thing still wasn’t as good as the real thing for me, but close enough for now. It would have to do until we could get alone again, which would hopefully be soon.

“Buttercup,” Blossom said after a while, who was already awake and getting dressed after taking a shower in the communal bathroom down the hall. How the hell was she awake _before_ me when she’d gone to bed after I did? “Ignoring your alarm won’t make it stop. Turn that thing off and get up.”

I closed my eyes, groaned again, and then flung one of my hands blindly toward my phone, feeling for it on the bedside table. Locating it after knocking a few things off the table by accident, I brought it towards my face, opened one eye, and then finally silenced the thing. I closed my eyes again blissfully.

Not fifteen seconds later, Blossom was right beside my bed, yanking my quilt completely off my body so that I was exposed to the chilly morning. Such cruelty. “Buttercup, get _up_. I’m not going to tell you again. Next time the alarm goes off, so help me, I’ll drag you out myself.”

Curling up into a ball, trying and failing to grab back my blankets with one hand, and then finally opening my eyes, I squinted them at her with resent. “I hate you,” I croaked.

“Yeah, yeah. Now go take a shower.” She threw a towel at my face as I sat up, and I pulled it off my face as I stormed out of our room to head to the bathroom.

With straight-faced displeasure, I ignored everyone that spoke in my direction on my way there. This was the one thing I hated about college, aside from the general school part—the people. So many people, _everywhere_. And huge dorms, with a huge amount of people. Thankfully, for freshmen, they were separated by sex, but that was the only good part about it.

It was enough that we had to share a dorm building with this many people, but _shared bathrooms for each floor?_ It was hell. Total hell. Barely any privacy, shared smells, shared mystery wet spots on the floor that you step in with your bare feet when you forget to wear flip flops or slippers in there. No. Just no. No to everything.

I really missed my bathroom at home, and my privacy. But I sucked it up, deciding it could be worse. I could’ve lived in Bubbles’ sorority house with her. Now that would’ve been _real_ hell.

After showering as fast as I could, I hurried back to our room, wrapped in a towel with my wet hair dripping down my back and shoulders. Blossom was still there, and she handed me a hot cup of coffee as soon as I came inside. Extra strong and black, just like I liked it. For the millionth time, I was so glad that we’d decided to buy a coffeemaker for our dorm room, rather than having to venture all the way down to the cafeteria first thing in the morning for a cup every day.

I took the cup from her gratefully as she turned back to packing up supplies in her bag for her first class of the day. “Why the hell is it so cold in here?” I asked, shivering and then taking a gulp of the hot beverage. It scalded all the way down.

Rubbing her hands together herself, Blossom shrugged. Her red hair was in one long, loose braid down her back, and her pink, long-sleeved sweater dress was neat and prim. “I guess the dorm supervisor doesn’t think we need to turn central heating on until it gets colder.”

I cringed, running to our shared closet to locate some warm clothes. “It’s pretty damn cold already,” I muttered, my teeth chattering. “It’s two weeks to Thanksgiving, what are they waiting for? The first snowfall?”

Ignoring my griping, she prepared to leave, gathering her things. Shrugging on her pastel pink coat, she pulled her backpack onto her shoulders. As she left through the door, she glanced back at me, saying bluntly, “Bundle up today. Don’t be late to class.”

Taking a mint green long sleeved shirt out of the closet that said ‘I DON’T LIKE YOU’ across the chest in white, dripping lettering, I rolled my eyes and grinned. “Thanks, _mom_.”

I quickly threw on the long sleeved shirt and black jeans with holes in them, tucked my wet hair under a loose black beanie, and pulled on my trusty, worn green sneakers. After trudging through the cold morning air, wrapping my leather jacket close to my body, I suffered through my first class of the day with glazed eyes and a minimum amount of attention, as usual.

I took my usual seat behind the guy that always brought his pillow to class and recorded the professor’s lecture on his phone as he slept. I didn’t know him, but I admired his ability to sleep through every single lecture without snoring loudly or getting kicked out.

After nearly two hours, class was done. Leaving the classroom, I decided to head toward the cafeteria for a late morning breakfast, since I hadn’t eaten yet, and my stomach felt like it was making a meal out of its own lining.

Just as I’d ordered a breakfast burrito, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Handing the cashier my money card as I hit talk, I brought my phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Good morning,” my boyfriend’s voice greeted me on the other end. He added in a self-amused way, “Get much sleep last night?”

I waited at the counter as the girl behind the counter heated up my food in a microwave. I rolled my eyes. “No, actually. Thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome,” he said proudly. “What are you doing? You just get out of class?”

The girl handed me my burrito on a paper plate, and I gave her a brief grin, mouthing ‘thanks’ before I turned around, searching for a place to sit. “Yeah, just got out. Now I’m—”

“Holding a breakfast burrito,” he said.

This gave me pause. “Wait,” I said, looking around me, bewildered. “How did you know that? Are you here right now?”

He was laughing into the receiver. I could hear his laugh in the cafeteria too, buried underneath the roar of voices, but from where, I couldn’t tell exactly. “Look by the fountain.”

Looking toward the fountain in the middle of the cafeteria, I found Butch, sitting at an empty table, leaning back against the tabletop with one elbow. He waved with one hand and hung up the phone with his other, smiling big.

Smiling back like an idiot, I came over to him. Stopping in front of his table as he stood to greet me, I shook my head, still cheesing hard. “How’d you even know I was here?” I scrunched my nose up jokingly. “Maybe I should get a restraining order.”

Ignoring that last part, he shrugged. “I knew you’d be here looking for something to eat,” he said simply. He kissed my forehead, his stubble brushing against my skin pleasantly. “Since you surprised me yesterday, I owed you a visit.” He reached a hand toward my plate, acting like he was going to grab my food.

I yanked it away from his reach. “Don’t even think about it,” I warned.

We sat down at the table, my legs stretched across his lap on the bench we shared, and I scarfed down my burrito as we talked. The video chat we’d had the night before weighed heavily between us even though we didn’t speak a word of it. If anything, it had just made the tension between us thicker instead of easing it. I saw the way he was looking at me, swallowing hard, looking down at my legs as he held them so they’d stay on his lap. How was it that we hadn’t been able to be alone— _alone_ alone—for a whole week? I was going crazy. And from the looks of things, he was too.

I had an entire hour before my next class, and Blossom’s back-to-back packed schedule didn’t allow her to come back to the dorm during the day. Now was the perfect time.

After finishing my burrito, I also finished off my orange juice and then leaned toward him. “Come up to my room,” I said, looking at him more calmly than I actually felt.

He jolted, like he hadn’t been expecting me to say that at all. His eyebrows rose. “Do we…have time?” He swallowed hard again, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Ugh. I wanted to kiss and bite it.

“If we hurry.” I took my legs back from his lap and stood up from the table. “If we run there, we’ll have a whole hour.”

Butch stood too, hesitatingly. “I have a class soon,” he said, though not enthusiastically. “I don’t know if…” he trailed off, putting his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, pulling him to me. I looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. “Skip it,” I told him. I traced a finger slowly down his chest.

A moment went by as Butch watched my finger drag down his chest with dark, lidded eyes, and then he reached back to unlock my arms from around him. Looking like for a moment he was going to say no, wickedness suddenly glinted in his eyes as a grin burst onto his face and he said, “Race you!” And then took off running in the direction of my dorm building.

Thrown off, I watched him retreat for a second and then laughed, chasing after him shouting, “You got a head start! Screw you, cheater!”

Both of us made it to my dorm room’s door at the same time, not the least bit breathless even though we had been at nearly a full run, and he waited, his hands squeezing my waist as I quickly fished out my room key from my pocket. I unlocked the door, flinging open the door and throwing my backpack off of me and out of the way.

He grabbed my face, kissing me hungrily before I could even get the door closed behind us. I found it blindly and swung it closed, clumsily locking it before Butch slammed me against it and pressed me into it with his body. His body felt so good against me, so solid and heavy and warm, and I needed more.

He threw off my beanie with one hand and then tangled his other hand into my unruly, air-dried hair. I tugged up the bottom of his black Pink Floyd shirt and broke our lips apart briefly to yank it over his head, and I pawed at his bare skin roughly as he peeled back my jacket and tossed it aside. Just as he was pulling off my shirt, however, the sudden noise of my phone going off interrupted us momentarily. After pausing for a second, he pulled my shirt off anyway. My phone went off again.

I started to reach for my phone in my pocket as Butch began kissing my neck, and I struggled to pull it free from my tight jeans.

Butch groaned against my neck as it went off again. “Just ignore it,” he mumbled.

Successfully getting it out, I glanced at the screen. “It’s my Hotline app,” I said.

He sucked my collarbone languorously, his teeth scraping against my skin. The sensation felt straight up sinful and it tempted me to throw my cell onto the wood floor and forget about the stupid app. “Who cares,” he muttered.

I sighed, standing my ground and forcing myself to remember my priorities. “It’s probably important.” I opened the notification and read what the alert said, my eyes widened, and then said, “Shit, Butch. Look at this.”

Finally, in a daze, he lifted his face from my neck, and I showed him what the alert said. ‘ _Emergency alert:_ _Creature attacking Townsville Plaza Shopping Centre’._ I shoved out of his grasp, pulling my shirt on again. Then, bending down to retrieve his shirt from the floor, I handed it to him. He took it grudgingly.

I shrugged at him. For me, anticipation for the oncoming battle took over any disappointment I had about sexy time being interrupted. In order of importance to me: 1. Fighting 2. Basic physical needs with the boyfriend. I grinned at him as he put his shirt back on, putting my phone away and barely containing my excitement as I said, “We’ll continue this later. Time to go kick some ass.”

#

As soon as we reached the front lawn of my dorm building, the both of us took off into the air at breakneck speeds, a burning, nuclear green following our path.

The Townsville Plaza wasn’t too far away from my school, merely blocks away, and we reached it in seconds. Being as far up in the sky as we were, we could see every bit of the commotion from above. Shoppers were screaming, ducking into shops, speeding away from the area in their cars. We hadn’t caught sight of the monster yet, though.

“Where the hell is this thing?” Butch asked. “It hasn’t left, right?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go in,” I told him, and after he directed a nod at me, we dropped to the ground, landing lightly on our feet. We were now standing directly in the middle of the Plaza.

It was Townsville’s sole high end shopping center, with fancy stores like Chanel, Gucci, and Marc Jacobs. Only Townsville’s wealthiest shopped here, as evidenced by the Mercedes, Porsches and BMWs and such in the parking lot. And right then, there was a shit load of rich people running for their lives.

It was hard to tell which direction they were running _from_ , because they were running everywhere— running into us, running into each other, tripping and falling and ducking for cover. _WHAM._ The both of us jumped as a door flung off of the Jimmy Choo store, the front windows shattering as the detached door flew across the plaza. People ducked away from it, the unruly crowd collectively running from that particular area.

And from the gaping hole crawled out the creature.

It was smaller than I’d been expecting, but still pretty big—it was hunched over on all four, spindly legs, and completely white in color, even slightly translucent. Its veins were visible through its white skin and it was gaunt looking, with all of its bones straining against its skin grotesquely. Even hunched over, it looked about seven feet tall. And it was gross, even by my standards. Its front legs were actually more like arms—it was walking on its knuckles like an ape. It had a humanlike head, two minute black dots for eyes that were right over its joker-like, grinning fanged mouth that stretched up the sides of its head to the top. Black liquid dripped from its fangs, and some kind of weird symbol was branded on the skin near the top of its forehead—three circles squished together that overlapped in the middle.

“Holy shit,” Butch said, staring ahead at it, looking mildly horrified.

“Looks like there’s our guy,” I grimaced at it too. “Or thing. Super fucking ugly thing.”

It tipped its head back as if sniffing the air, then abruptly, looked directly at us. Neither of us moved. It slowly tipped its head to the side as if it recognized us. Then very slowly, it stood up on its hind legs to its full height, bracing its arms at its sides as if it were human. Ribs stuck out in its torso sickly.  Stretched up at full height, it was at least nine or ten feet tall.

I stared back at it, unsettled. “It’s as if it knows we came here to fight it,” I told Butch.

At the sound of my voice, the creature recoiled, threw its head back, opened its jaws, and let out a wail like I’d never heard before—like ten human screams put together with the sound of a radio stuck between stations.

I’d taken a step backward at the sound. What was this thing? I narrowed my eyes at it challengingly as I said to Butch under my breath, “Do you think this thing can fly?”

“Doubt it,” he said in a low voice back to me, eyeing it. “No wings. Its eyes look bad, too. Maybe it senses heat to see,” he paused. “Maybe that’s why it picked us out of the crowd. Our body temperatures. It knows we’re not human.”

Amazed at his reasoning just then, I nodded slowly. That had actually made sense. That was Butch though—he had the mind of a warrior. His amazing ability to pick apart an opponent was like no one else’s. Back when we were enemies, I’d hated that about him. Now it was one of the things I loved the most. “Let’s hope you’re right,” I said to him. I still didn’t take my eyes off of the creature, just in case it moved towards us. I didn’t want to be caught off guard. “We’ll attack from both sides. Keep it distracted while the other attacks from behind.”

“Got it,” he said. “Count of three.”

“One,” I said, bracing my legs to take off.

“Two.” He did the same.

Adrenaline was already pulsing through my body like fire in my veins, my hands shaking with anticipation. It felt so good. I clenched them into fists, smiling. God, I’d missed this feeling. Taking a deep breath, my legs coiling for the jump, I shouted, “ _Three!_ ”

We burst into the air at the same time that it fell forward on its front legs again, galloping directly at us. It charged through the space that we’d previously occupied, its head whipping around in alarm as it realized we weren’t standing there anymore, searching for us.

I went first, barreling down from the air straight into its back with both of my fists. As my fists collided, it shrieked, and I drew my hands back with a hiss. Its skin was cold, ice cold. It began to turn around to face me, and as I aimed a kick to the back of its neck, I leaped over its head. It screamed again.

From above, Butch aimed his heat vision at the middle of its back, allowing me to fly up into the air again as the thing turned again, looking for him.

I flew in front of it, aiming heat vision directly at its feet to get its attention. It whipped its head back to face me, its beady little eyes on me as it jumped away from the heat, its jaws snapping at me.

“Oh, did that make you mad? Poor little baby,” I taunted. I aimed another shot of heat at its front foot, and it made a pained squeal and then bristled.

While its attention was on me, Butch came down at it, kicking his feet repeatedly into its back. It roared in rage, reared up on its arms and kicked back at him with both of its back feet, successfully hitting Butch square in the torso. He flew backward into the nearest store and through the glass display window.

I cried out in momentary fear that I couldn’t help. “Butch!” I swiveled back to the creature, something within me lighting up in flames. Seeing the thing starting to follow after where he had landed, I launched after it. Coming up behind it and wrapping both hands around its skinny, frail neck, I squeezed hard. “Not my boyfriend, you ugly bastard.” I said, spinning around and flinging it as hard as I could across the square. Thankfully, no one was in its way—the square had cleared out by now, and it looked like we were the only ones there.

It hurled against the Coach store, landing against the sign and then falling down onto the brick ground with a heavy thud. The ‘O’ from the sign fell of the building and landed around its neck, and it struggled to get it off, shimmying and whipping its head from side to side. I took that moment to run over to Butch. “Are you good? Any injuries?” I asked him, climbing through the broken window to help him up.

Looking pissed, he took my hand, standing up and rubbing his head. “Yeah, I’m good. That little shit is feisty, isn’t it?” He nodded toward the window with a slightly angry looking grin, showing me he really was okay. I breathed out in relief. He said, “Come on, let’s go take this thing down.”

I smiled back wickedly.

Together we flew back outside as soon as the thing was starting to stand back up on its hind legs, at its full nine foot height once again. Not wasting any time, we attacked.

Butch swung with a punch to its face, I came at it with a kick to the knee. The bone in its leg gave with a snap, and it wailed, crumpling to the ground and throwing an arm back to smack me away.

I ducked from the arm just as Butch punched it again in the back of its neck. I kicked it hard in the torso and I heard a couple of its ribs break.

Screaming again—weaker and deep throated, like a man’s scream—it leaned down and caught my shoulder between its jaws, sinking its fangs into my flesh. I cried out as it turned its head sharply and chucked me away with its mouth, and I sailed through the air and _thunked_ hard against the steel statue that stood in the middle of the Plaza. Behind the loud _clang_ that resounded as I left a dent in the steel, I heard Butch shout my name.

Landing on the cold hard brick ground, the wind knocked out of me, I immediately grasped my arm under where the fangs had gone into me. A tiny amount of blood was coming out, mixing on my shirt with the black goop that had coated the thing’s teeth. “Fuck,” I said, hissing through my teeth. I felt it throbbing fast, though, which meant it was healing.

Jumping back up on my feet and turning, I saw Butch staving off the thing by blocking it with a green energy shield. I came soaring back, flinging myself at the monster, throwing a flying uppercut punch to its jaw. A crunch resounded, and it flew backward, just missing hitting Butch as he scrambled out of the way. It crashed into another storefront, the front windows breaking and broken glass raining down on it. “That’s for leaving nasty monster drool all over my favorite shirt, asswipe!” I shouted at it.

“How bad?” Butch came to my side immediately, drawing aside the collar of my shirt to look at my wound.

I glanced down at it too. The tiny needlepoints had already healed up, thanks to the Chemical X in my bloodstream that clogged up the shallow stab marks. New, pink skin was covering where there were bleeding wounds seconds earlier. I pulled my shirt collar up to cover it again. “I’m all right.” I looked toward the monster, and I saw that it was getting back up. It stood up again, on both hind legs once more, although it was limping. I frowned. “That’s not right,” I said, shaking my head. “No. I broke its leg. It shouldn’t be standing like that.”

Butch was frowning, too. “Looks like it’s healing, too.” He braced himself, preparing to take off again. “Break it again. I’ll help you break the other ones. That’s the only way to get it to stop running and standing.”

I nodded at him, and we were off. I came at its leg with all my strength again, aiming a flying kick at it with all of my body weight. At the same time, Butch took one of its arms and drove his elbow through it, not just snapping it in half but _breaking it off of its body_. Black liquid sprayed everywhere. Crumbling to the ground once again, the creature let out the loudest scream yet, this one sounding like a female human, and it rung out throughout the neighborhood with an echo so great that the whole town had to have heard it.

I came at the other leg. Following Butch’s lead, I kicked down at the thigh bone with my foot, heard it crunch, then yanked the limb up as hard as I could with my hands. It came off, and black goop gushed from the wound, flooding all over my favorite sneakers. In one quick movement, I ripped off the leg that I’d just broken again. Another ear-shattering scream.

While it was distracted, Butch went for the last limb, arms flexing as he tore it off with his bare hands, more black liquid pouring out of the exit wound like a fountain.

The creature began to make wheezing sounds, screaming between them weakly. This time, most disturbingly, it sounded like a child screaming.

“Let’s shut this thing up,” Butch said, and he began rubbing his hands together hard and fast—smoke rose up from them. Since I had that ability too, I knew what that meant, and immediately I backed away, flying up into the air just as he lifted up as well. I joined in, rubbing my hands together, feeling the heat building quickly as they began to smoke. Between his rubbing hands grew an atomic green ball of fire that stung my retinas to look at, and feeling the energy and heat in my body build and surge down through my arms, soon an orb of green fire formed between my hands, too, searing against my skin. With a war cry, Butch hurled the ball down at the creature the same time that I chucked mine, and _BOOM_.

I closed my eyes and shielded my face with my hands from the powerful emerald explosion as the aftershock flew past me and shattered every window within a 15 foot radius.

The noise died down. Dropping my arms, I opened my eyes and looked at the charred, limbless creature. It twitched, threw its head back with one last static noise, and then the noise cut off as black goop bubbled out of its throat. Then it stopped in that position, rigid, never moving again.

Landing on the ground, we turned to each other. We were both filthy. Our clothes were full of holes, and we were covered in that black goop that had a chemical, acidic smell to it. Holding his hands up in the air, requesting double high fives, Butch said, “Nice going, partner in crime.”

Taking a moment to laugh at the irony of him saying that, I stood up on my tip toes to slap him five with both hands, smirking at him. “You know, I know we’ve done this before, but we should fight together more often. At least once a week. We kick ass.” Plus, it had done wonders for my stress. I felt so much better now.

“Hell yeah, we do.” Butch glanced around us, looking at the mess. Abandoned shopping bags, broken glass, and black goop were _everywhere._ “I’m still not that used to crime fighting. What do we do now? Are we supposed to uh…I don’t know…clean up?” He didn’t look excited at all by that idea.

Laughing again, I elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t worry, that’s not our job. Mayor sends cleanup crews to take care of that. Besides, the news stations are gonna want footage of all the damage. They’ll probably show up soon.” I took his grimy hand in my grimy hand. “Let’s just get the hell out of here and have dirty post-battle, class-skipping sex.”

He smiled down at me goofily, as giddy as I was from our post-fighting high. “That’s my girl,” he said.

I got on my tip toes again to plant a kiss on his lips, and then we both flew back to my campus, waving down at all of the grateful citizens below who thanked us and cheered at us.

Then we locked ourselves in my dorm room and finished what we’d started earlier, not even caring that we were still all grubby…and, by the way?

It was totally worth waiting a whole week.

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

“ _At full height, the creature was about nine and a half feet tall. It had gone through 3 different shops before the Powerpuff-Rowdyruff pair had shown up, but thankfully, aside from some minor injuries, most shop patrons were unharmed. Eyewitnesses say that it was as if the monster had materialized into the Plaza out of thin air, though that detail hasn’t been officially confirmed. This incident comes right on the heels of the spider monster that attacked downtown Townsville just this Sunday.”_

Tuesday afternoon, during my visit back home, Professor and I watched the television as the news reporter recited these words with nearly no emotion on her face, though she may have been going for the ‘serious’ look. She stood among the damage at the Townsville Plaza, surrounded by glass and some black stuff all over the ground. They had already hauled away the charred remains of the monster away to dispose of it, which they had shown on camera. I’d thought that was in pretty bad taste, but that was the media for you.

“ _Townsville police are investigating the separate cases, and they say there is not enough evidence yet that they might be related in any way. It has been years since any monsters have plagued the city of Townsville. Since the Powerpuff Girls and the Rowdyruff Boys teamed together two years ago to protect the town, crime has decreased tenfold.”_

Amused, I chuckled. “’Teamed together’? Is that only what they’ve been calling it in the media?”

“I think the news stations leave the dating rumors to gossip magazines,” Professor said, shooting me a dry look and turning up the TV. I laughed again.

_“Many wonder where this new resurgence of monsters has come from, and what it might mean for everyone who lives here. We reached out to local renowned scientist Professor Utonium with some questions, and he refused to provide comment.”_

I glanced over at my dad, eyebrows raised. I imitated the reporter’s voice. “’Refused to provide comment’? How come you didn’t respond, Professor?”

Professor sighed and rolled his eyes. “Typical media. Always contacting me for things like this. Just because I’m a scientist it doesn’t mean I know exactly what’s going on either,” he muttered. Sitting forward on his spot on the couch, though, he stared at the television again as they rolled footage taken of the battle from an eyewitness’s cell phone. He adjusted his bifocal glasses, frowning. “Although, it’s peculiar…”

I froze, the cookie in my hand stopping halfway to my mouth. I blinked at him. “What is?”

He continued. “That black liquid…the viscosity, the opacity…if I didn’t know better, I’d think that it was…” he trailed off again, his frown making the lines on his face deeper.

I put my cookie down on my plate. “Professor, what is it?”

Professor paused, silent for a few more moments, and then he shook his head at himself. “No, it couldn’t be Chemical X. It looks so much like it, and that creature has some of the physical characteristics of an experiment made from Chemical X, but that would be impossible.”

“Why would it be impossible?” I asked.

“Because I’m the only person in possession of Chemical X, and it’s locked up in my safe downstairs. Remember, Mayor declared it illegal for ordinary citizens to own any Chemical X years ago.” He picked up his mug of tea, sitting back on the couch again. “Well, except for that small sample I donated to be on display in the Townsville Science Museum 14 years ago. But it’s under high security.”

I nodded then, frowning too. “Yeah. You’re right, that would be impossible.”

Professor shrugged, then took a sip of his tea. “Anyway, have you talked to Buttercup? Is she doing okay? That fight seemed brutal.” He paused with a look of distaste. “And Butch…is he okay, too?”

I snorted at his poorly veiled dislike. He had recently found out that Butch and Buttercup were sexually active, and he was not the biggest fan of him at the moment. “I called her as soon as I found out about what happened. She didn’t answer the phone, but about an hour ago, she texted me and said they were fine.” She’d also nearly given me a heart attack when she hadn’t answered her phone, but that was beside the point. All was well now, anyway.

“Well that’s…that’s good. I’m glad they’re okay.” Professor picked up the remote control, changing the channel. “Let’s watch something else now, shall we? I’ve had enough of this.” He changed it to a sitcom with a cute little girl dancing around in a poofy dress. She pranced around, bragging about how cute she looked. He cooed in that way that all parents do over little kids. “I remember when you and your sisters were that age. So adorable. I miss those days sometimes.”

Finishing off my cookie and brushing my hands together, I grinned over at him sideways and said jokingly, “You probably won’t have to wait too much longer for grandchildren. My bet is on Bubbles to have them first.” Then I laughed. “Buttercup would be last for sure.”

Professor chuckled, and then with a completely offhand tone that threw me off, he said, “Yes, well. That would be nice and all. It’s really a shame that all of you are sterile.”

I stopped, my blood running cold, freezing to ice inside of my veins. It felt like my heart had dropped into my stomach. I stared over at him in shock, watching his face. “Wait…” I paused for a long time. “Are you being serious?”

He looked back over at me, seemingly surprised at my confusion. “Was what I just said serious, you mean? Yes. I was being perfectly serious.” Looking closer at the look on my face, though, he turned to face me, his dark eyebrows forming a line. “You knew that, didn’t you sweetheart?”

I blinked at him. For some reason, my stomach was full of a sourness that I couldn’t explain. “No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

Professor set his tea down on the coffee table, looking a bit guilty. “I’m sorry. I thought you and your sisters understood that long ago. It wouldn’t be…it wouldn’t be possible for you to reproduce. I didn’t design you girls to have that capability.” He pressed his lips together. “Even though you have the ability to menstruate, your bodies are too hostile of an environment to carry life. And that would be if you could even produce offspring with another person at all, human or not. Procreating with a human would definitely be impossible, since you’re of a different species altogether.”

I was quiet for a few long seconds during his explanation, and then I turned to face the TV again, setting my empty cookie plate onto the table, too. I asked him in a quiet voice, “Could we change the subject, please?”

He smiled a staid smile back at me, guilt plain on his face now. “Sure.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon at home, but the good mood between the two of us was spoiled. I wasn’t sure why learning of that fact about my sisters and I had made me feel so uneasy, but it had. It felt like I should have known about that already, or guessed at it at least, but I hadn’t.

When I went back to campus, attended my evening class of the day, spent some time studying in the library, and then went back to my dorm room, it was still weighing heavily on my mind. I didn’t breathe a word of it to Buttercup, even when she had asked about my visit with Professor. I didn’t know why.

I didn’t know if Buttercup would even care about it as much as I did. Maybe she wouldn’t care. She didn’t even like babies very much. She thought they were gross and noisy. So why did I keep it to myself?

Maybe it was the lack of possibility that felt haunting to me. I knew that there were some human experiences that we couldn’t have, but I guess I’d never thought that much about it. _‘Too hostile of an environment to carry life.’_ I’d never really thought about having kids in the future with Brick, because I was way too young for that, but having the knowledge now that we never would was a huge blow, and it stung more fiercely than I could have ever imagined.

I went to sleep that night with the sick feeling still in my stomach.


	5. Pas de Deux

**Chapter Four**

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

“Second position, and, _plie_ ,” my ballet teacher instructed us.

I bent down with the rest of my classmates; with both hands placed on the pole, we slowly bent our knees with our feet shoulder width apart. Then we stood back up, straightening our knees. Gentle piano music was playing in the background.

“Now third position. And _plie_ ,” she said, walking past us and watching us with a critical eye.

Even though Ballet I was only one of my extra classes, Mrs. Chappelle was easily my strictest teacher. She had been a ballerina for 30 years in the New York Ballet, and five years ago, she had retired to teach the art she had long mastered. She was a prim, neat woman, a perfectionist—like Blossom times a thousand, always wore her grey-striped dark brown hair in a bun, and was extremely tall with long legs that were still powerful and sculpted despite her age.

“Fourth position, I want to see straight lines. _Plie_ ,” she barked.

We did as asked. The girl behind me, a girl named Audrey that I talked to during breaks sometimes, sighed almost inaudibly. I bit back a smile as I straightened my knees again.

“Fifth position,” our instructor said next. “ _Plie._ ”

Groans and grunts came from some of my classmates as they struggled with twisting both their feet inward in the unnatural position, and Mrs. Chappelle rolled her eyes in disdain. I had transitioned into the position with no strain at all, though my joints and muscles were more flexible than their human ones, so that was probably why.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you all have _got_ to practice this position more. The semester is more than halfway over, this is unacceptable. I should not be hearing all of this struggling over one position,” she scolded. As she strolled past me with her perfect posture, she paused, then looked me up and down with approval. “Excellent form, Bubbles. Nearly perfect.” She looked at the rest of the class and pointed at me. “This girl has clearly been practicing. Everyone take note.”

At the whole classes’ attention on my form, I felt a flush spread from my face all the way back to my ears. I actually hadn’t practiced at all, but I didn’t want to say anything. “Thank you, Madame,” I said. Some of my classmates glared at me in envy. I looked away from them. It wasn’t like I could _help_ being built differently than them. I just was. It wasn’t anything to get so mad at, though.

With a glance at the clock, our instructor turned off the piano music coming from her mp3 player, clicking a button with her small remote, and then clapped her hands together. “Well, class, that’s it for this week. I’ll see you next Tuesday and Thursday, do not be late. Remember to practice your positions, and next week, we’ll be starting on arabesques.” With that, she left to her office, and we all went over to our bags to change from our ballet slippers into our normal shoes.

I stopped by my pastel, sparkly blue bag, sitting down to take off my white slippers. As I put them into my bag and retrieved my flat boots that had pillow-like insides—my favorite shoes to wear after Ballet class—I heard two of my female classmates whispering behind me as they put on their street shoes, my advanced ears picking it up as clearly as if they were speaking to my face.

The first voice I heard was high, and a little snooty. “She’s totally not a beginner. I bet she registered for this class just so she’d be the star student.”

The second one chimed in, “Yeah, she’s already a famous superhero. What is she even doing in this school? Doesn’t she have more giant bugs to squash somewhere?” She stopped, snorting.

The first girl giggled. “Seriously, how much more attention does she need? She’s even a member of that sorority that’s hard to get into. Must be nice to get whatever you want when you’re famous. What a showoff.”

Gritting my teeth and my eyebrows furrowing slightly, I quickly turned to look at them head on. “Excuse me?” I said.

They gasped, clearly realizing that I had heard their every word, avoided my gaze and scurried out of the dance hall with their bags.

I sighed slowly as I looked back down at my bag, my shoulders slumping and a slight sting rising in my throat. Hearing that had stung. I’d already known that there were people that didn’t like going to the same school as us, but I’d never heard it for myself, especially in such a rude way. I had thought we only had to deal with people like that in high school, but I guess I’d been wrong. Maybe high school never really, truly ended—just transferred to different venues.

After slipping on my comfy, plush boots, I slung my bag over my shoulder, swallowed back my hurt and walked out of the dance hall, taking a different exit than those girls had.

As soon as I got outside, not feeling like I could stand the entire walk back to my dorm after that ordeal, I made a snap decision. I decided for once to break the only rule that the Dean had for us as a condition for allowing us to attend the university on a superhero discount—i.e., paid for by the government—no superpowers on campus unless it was for an emergency.

I took off into the air, deciding that this felt like an emergency. I heard noises of surprise and shouting as the few people who had been walking around me watched me fly away, and I knew that I’d probably pay for this later.

Within seconds, I made it to the big, beautiful Phi Tappa Kegga house on Greek street. After landing in the front yard where the grass had turned yellow, which almost matched the pastel yellow paint on the outside of the house, I entered through the front door. Walking through the gorgeous, chandeliered entrance hall, I went straight up the winding staircase where my room was on the 3rd floor, pushing open my bright, neon blue door that had a sign with my name on it in shiny silver letters.

I locked the door behind me and plugged in my string lantern lights I had strung along the light blue walls, bringing a soft light to the room. I got out my laptop, plopping down on my plushy, satin, cerulean bed comforter and grabbing one of my Sanrio pillows to hug for comfort.

I waited for my computer to wake up. When it was awake and fully functional, I opened up my video chatting program, scrolled through my contacts and then clicked on Boomer’s username, calling him and praying he was already using his computer in a private place.

The first time I called, he didn’t answer. I called again after waiting five minutes, and this time, _thankfully_ , he answered. His gorgeous face appeared onscreen, his long, shiny blonde hair hanging in his dark blue eyes. I recognized his dorm room in the background. “Hi angel,” he greeted. His smile dropped off his face when he saw my expression. “What’s wrong?”

I grimaced, letting the hurt from earlier flow out of my lips, telling him the short story of what had happened in class earlier. Saying it out loud made the sting in my throat come back. “Is that what they really think of us? Do they really all think that we’re attention seekers?”

The whole time, Boomer had been listening carefully with a concerned look on his face. “Sweetheart, don’t listen to people like that. Don’t let it bother you, okay? Those girls are obviously jealous of your natural gracefulness and physicality. And probably your prettiness, too. You can’t help that you were made that way.”

Shyly, I chuckled. He always knew what to say to make me feel better. “I guess,” I said.

He continued softly, leaning closer to his webcam, “I’m sure the majority of your classmates like you. They have no reason not to. You’re wonderful.”

I leaned toward my webcam, too, resting my chin in my hands. “No, _you_ are. Thanks for cheering me up, sweetie.” Hugging my pillow closer to me and leaning back, a smile came onto my face again. His amazing ability to turn a bad day into a good one was one of my favorite things about him. “How’s your day going? Morning classes go all right?”

As Boomer told me about his day, and we laughed about some kid in his first class that had brought breakfast from some fast food place with him to the lecture, I completely forgot about the petty girls in my ballet class.

“Hey, I have some time before my first afternoon class.” He said suddenly. “It’s your lunch break too, right? Want to go grab some lunch somewhere?”

He didn’t need to ask me twice. I changed out of my Ballet clothes and put on a casual outfit cute enough for a spontaneous lunch date with my boyfriend—tights, a breezy lace dress, and a cardigan. Soon, his car pulled up in front of the house, and I opened and jumped in through the passengers’ door, greeting him with a hug attack.

We got some lunch at a Greek place nearby, and then had some time to spare after eating, so we left his car behind in the parking lot and went for a quick fly.

The city’s skyline always looked different from up above. The endless walls of huge buildings seemed so small, the people and traffic even smaller. Humans only got to see the city from this angle in airplanes and helicopters, we got to see it whenever we wanted to. Sometimes I forgot what a privilege that was.

The air wasn’t too warm, nor was it too cold. Hands interlocked, we flew over downtown, over the Capital building, and on impulse, decided to take a short break on the bridge. Landing down on one of the tall steel towers that held up the suspension cables, we sat and let our feet dangle over the edge and into the empty air, which plunged downward endless stories. The lines of moving cars on the bridge far below were antlike.

I pulled out my cell, being extremely careful not to be clumsy and drop it into the traffic below, and told Boomer to pose. He stuck his tongue out towards my phone’s front facing camera lens, and as I got my best angle and did my best cute smile, I took a picture of both of us with the uninterrupted blue sky stretching back behind our heads and the sun making our blonde hair gleam and our squinting eyes sparkle. After carefully putting my phone safely back in my pocket, Boomer stretched an arm around me, pulling me into him, breathing a satisfied sigh into my hair.

I rested my head in the crook of his neck, breathing in the crisp November air, willing this moment to stretch on forever.

Moments like this, where we could escape from everyone else and find someplace quiet, reminded me of the night that we fell in love. There were no shooting stars to wish on now, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like times like these were like a fairy-tale.

Me, him, the breezy air, and the endless blue sky that surrounded us. On top of the world.

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

A clock ticked on the opposite wall. Steam rose up from the mug that held my regular order, a French vanilla raspberry cappuccino. Mellow acoustic music was playing softly over the speakers.

Two guys were talking in low voices on the other side of the café, leaning over the table towards one another—if I concentrated I could listen to what they were saying easily, but I didn’t care to eavesdrop at the moment. A middle aged woman sat at the barstools by herself, reading a book. And across the table from me, Brick was tapping the back of his pen against his notebook methodically, as he always did when he was focusing.

He was reading out of a textbook in his lap with absolute, grim-faced concentration, his eyebrows furrowed. Sunlight was slanting in through the window next to us, and it highlighted the white scar that slashed through his right eyebrow, the one I’d accidentally given him when we were kids and fighting each other was all we understood.

We had done this a few times this semester, study dates at the café that Bubbles and Boomer had discovered a few months ago—which was the perfect distance between both of our campuses. It was always quiet and peaceful, perfect for studying, and no rushing, irritable customers that other well-known chain cafés usually had.

I wanted to do this more often. These were always my favorite afternoons. Just me, my books and laptop, Brick and his books, some coffee, and our café.

Studying for my Thermodynamics class didn’t leave much room for catching up or any chatting at all, but I was content just sitting here with him. Him being there with me was enough.

For a while, I quietly worked on my homework of problem sets, reverting back to the calm trance-like state that I always fell into when I studied.

Interrupting my trance after about a half an hour of peace, my phone buzzed loudly on the table. Brick and I looked up at it at the same time, startled. Brick had been chewing on the end of his pen, and he’d frozen with it still between his teeth. Grinning at him in apology, I picked it up and glanced at the screen. As soon as I did, my heart skipped a pulse. I opened the notification and read what followed, and then reading again, I stood up from my seat, my face becoming staid.

It was what I’d been worried about receiving for days now: a notification from my Hotline app. It read, ‘ _Emergency Alert: Creature attacking east downtown square’_.

Brick was still chewing on the end of his pen, but he was staring at me in alarm, knowing something was wrong. “What is it?” He asked.

“It’s my Hotline app,” I said, showing him what the alert said, then reaching down to close all of my books and notes. “It’s only ten minutes from here. We need to go, now.”

Brick had stood up too, setting down his pen and closing his books as well. “What do we do with our stuff?”

“Just leave it, we’ll come back for it,” I told him. I looked over at the middle-aged owner behind the counter, who was already looking at us. “We’ll be back for our things. Emergency,” I said politely to him, and the older man nodded at me, his round glasses tipping forward on his nose.

Brick and I rushed out of the café.

Making it out onto the sidewalk, we paused at first, stopping to hold hands, and then lifted off into the air, flying high above the city surrounding us to get a bird’s eye view of downtown.

Seeing dark smoke pouring up into the sky from about 9 blocks away, we traded looks and then sped off in that direction, our hands clasped together the whole way. Neon pink and red light chased us at our heels. The wind threatened to loosen my long, hip length ponytail, but thanks to my habit of using two hair ties instead of just one, it stayed put, whipping against my back.

Within seconds, we arrived at the chaotic scene, landing on our feet.

There were citizens running in every direction, covering their mouths with scarves and sleeves, coughing and shouting, trying to get away from the smoke. It made the surrounding air hazy, and there were other loud noises echoing through the area, though there were so many that it was hard to tell exactly where each of them were coming from.

Through the smoke didn’t bother our lungs, the added thickness to the air was an unpleasant sensation. I felt my pupils growing, adjusting to see through the haze. I turned to Brick. “You find the fire and put it out. I’ll find the monster.”

He leaned in closer to me, looking down at me in uncertainty. The pupils in his ruby irises were huge and dark. “Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll shout when I find it,” I told him, letting go of his hand and lifting into the air. “Be careful.”

“You too,” Brick shouted after me as he took off, and I flew the opposite direction. I swooped down close to the ground a few times to help guide some families into their cars to escape, then making sure they got away safely, I went back up into the air, squinting into the immediate area around me. The smoke was starting to thin out—Brick must have put out the fire, whichever building it had been coming from.

‘Where is this thing?’ I thought to myself as I continued to search. There were streetlamps that had fallen over, fire hydrants that were spouting water onto the street, peculiar hairline cracks in the concrete and strange, perfectly round small holes in some surrounding buildings. Obvious damage, but no creature. Had it left to another area of town? Were we going to have to track it down elsewhere? Follow the path of damage, maybe?

The very next moment, I had my answer.

Out of nowhere, there was a loud crash, and then an abandoned car was coming flying directly at me from straight ahead. Inhaling sharply, I ducked out of the way, unintentionally throwing myself through the window of an office building next to me. Closing my eyes, I covered my face against the flying shards of glass, bracing myself for an impact.

I landed on some carpet, rolled and landed in a crouch, ensuring that I stopped safely, then I opened my eyes. I was in a room of cubicles. There were workers on the other side of the room, crouched behind chairs and desks and watching me with alarm and fear. Standing up again, I looked right at them, gestured for them to leave, and yelled, “You’re all in danger. Go take cover! Now!” All of them immediately rushed out of the room, hopefully to someplace in the building where it was safer.

I climbed back outside through the hole I’d left in the window, glancing around me cautiously. I looked to where the vehicle had landed, and it was now a heap of metal lying in the street. Warily, I looked over in the direction it had come from, and finally, I saw the elusive creature.

It wasn’t moving. It didn’t even seem to be breathing. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at, but I only knew that it was unnatural and it didn’t belong there. It was perfectly spherical like a globe, white as snow, and had long, thin spikes coming out from every inch of its eerily round body. There was no face, from what I could see, or legs, or arms. It reminded me of something—a sea urchin? Only it was completely white and fifteen feet tall.

“Brick,” I called out, knowing he would hear me from wherever he was. “I think I found it.”

After I spoke, the thing seemingly responded—it made a sound that almost sounded like a cackle coming from an old, static-y radio. It was the first sign of life I’d gotten from this thing, and it thoroughly disturbed me, making a chill pass through me all the way to my bones.

Brick landed next to me with no warning, saying with a smirk in a normal toned voice, “What do you mean, you _think_ you found it?” I held up a hand, signaling him to freeze like I had, and he stopped, his grin dropping away.

The creature tittered again, static and ominous and disturbing. Then there was a terrifying, loaded pause, the way complete silence feels when you know that something dreadful is about to happen. Hair raising at the back of my neck, I looked at Brick with just my eyes, not even daring to turn my head in his direction. He did the same, staying as still as he possibly could.

“Fly,” I mouthed. He nodded almost imperceptibly. With my hand, I held out three fingers. Then, two fingers. Then one.

We flung ourselves into the air, soaring upward off the ground, and at the sudden movement, the monster responded again, in a way neither of us had anticipated. The creature reared back and then in one sudden movement, _burst_. The thousands of spikes on its body exploded off of it, flying in a thousand different directions.

The spikes sailed through nearby windows, soared through road signs and buildings, came hurling through the air towards Brick and I as we hovered, sinking into our skin.

I screamed at the same time I heard him shout, and I gawked down at the thin white spikes that stuck out of me everywhere. I reached down frantically and pulled one out of my thigh, swallowing back a shriek at the sting. I brought it close to my face, examining it. The point of the spike that had been in my skin was completely black with some sort of thick, viscous liquid. The liquid came out from the inside of the spike, ran down the sides of it and down my hand in opaque, bubbling black stripes. Now that I was seeing it for myself, with my own two eyes, I knew what it was. I would recognize it anywhere.

It was just like the liquid that had come out of the monster that Boomer and Bubbles had fought. And just like the liquid that came out of the monster Buttercup and Butch had defeated. And it was what had breathed life into me, my sisters, the Rowdyruff boys, and transformed Mojo Jojo.

Chemical X.

‘Professor was right,’ I thought, my eyes widening. But who had made these Chemical X monsters? How did they turn out like this, so ugly and evil? And where were they coming from? Why were they being made?

I stared down at the creature in bafflement. As I watched, coming up to replace the god-awful spikes that it had propelled, brand new spikes rose up out of its body to take their place, as equally sharp and dangerous as the old ones. Then, as the monster rolled backward slightly, we saw its face for the first time, big and sticking out slightly from the perfect sphere body, in the only area with no spikes sticking out of it. Its face was white, angular, and looked exactly like the grinning skull of a human. It grinned up at us, watching us with its empty skull eye holes. A strange symbol was branded on its forehead—three hollow circles overlapping each other, like a Venn diagram.

“Jesus,” Brick said under his breath, momentarily stopping as he pulled spikes out of his skin and gaping at the creature, looking a little disturbed. “I’ve never seen something like this before. This thing’s a special kind of nasty, isn’t it?”

I grimaced, grabbing the rest of the spikes in my skin as quickly as I could and ripping all of them out. The stab wounds bled slightly, but they throbbed quickly, and I knew they’d heal in a matter of seconds. “This black stuff is Chemical X. It’s what was in the monsters that our respective siblings fought, and it’s what this one is made out of, too.” I looked at Brick in time to see his eyes widen in shock. “The spikes are filled with it. It’s not harmful to us, obviously, but we have to keep it from shooting at any humans. For them, it would be fatal.”

With a grunt, Brick yanked out the last of the spikes that had stuck him, which were unfortunately on his butt. “And how do you suggest we do that? It seems like it has plenty of them in supply.” In response, the creature snickered through its static noise. Brick looked down at it in alarm.

I paused, looking down at it again and thinking hard. “It uses some sort of launch mechanism, but the spikes are also how it moves. Do you see how it’s leaning back on the bottom ones to right itself? Also, it took at least…what, thirty seconds maybe…for the spikes to be fully replaced.” I glanced at him, knowing he’d been following my thought pattern but saying it aloud anyway, “So we make it move. Chase us. It shouldn’t be able to launch spikes and move at the same time.”

“Genius.” He was smirking widely, nodding in approval. “That’s my girl,” he said. He looked over at it again. “Also, apparently it can hear us and understand us. Let’s taunt it so it’ll want to keep chasing us.”

I smirked this time. “I’ll leave that mostly to you. You’re the master of insults.”

Brick grinned, proud. “Thank you.”

I laughed, turning back toward the monster. Readying my legs, I got my game face back on. “Let’s go.”

Briefly counting down again, we hurled back towards it. It watched us approach emptily, and just as it reared back, preparing to launch its spikes, Brick scoffed. “Pathetic. Is that all you got? What are you, some kind of overgrown Frankenstein soccer ball? Ooh, I’m so scared.” It responded with a static cough, seemingly affronted.

“Bet it can’t even fly,” I responded to Brick in a sing-song voice. I began circling around the creature, leaving swirls of neon pink light around it.

“Bet it’s too stupid to fly,” Brick quipped back, hopping back behind it, out of its view, then in front of it again, then back again. I laughed again.

The thing responded again with a single grunt, dizzily trying to glare at us as we moved around it. Then, at the same time, we sped past it, flying into the same direction away from it. As we flew by, pointing with my finger, I aimed a lightning bolt into one of its eye pits as Brick aimed his heat vision at the bottom spikes that held its whole body up. The creature let out a static-y chortle that sounded more like a shriek of pain, then it promptly swiveled around, coming barreling after us.

“It didn’t take much to piss it off,” yelled Brick, part surprised, part exhilarated. The pursuit beginning, we blasted away.

I took some glances back at it, and it was spinning forward, flinging its spherical spiked body towards us like some kind of pinball from hell. It recklessly rolled over the street, rolled against the sides of buildings, weaving back and forth to gain speed.

It moved surprisingly fast for how stagnant it had been sitting before, and it turned out that my hypothesis had been right: it wasn’t shooting any spikes at us. Its face was barely visible as it moved, appearing in brief flashes on the left side of its body, then the right, then occasionally the center again, revealing a hollow glower as it snickered at us menacingly.

What I hadn’t counted on, though, was the throwing.

I had been wondering how it had managed to throw a car at me earlier, considering it had no hands, and I was finding out how right now. The monster spun over a nearby abandoned car, the car _stuck to the spikes_ , and then rolled over the top of its spherical body and flung at us at top speed.

Brick and I flew apart, ducking away as it hurled between us and crashed onto the road ahead, which the creature rolled over and flung at us _again_. We dipped and weaved out of the way and continued zig-zagging as it threw more debris on the ground at us unrelentingly.

“Okay,” I shouted, turning sharply to avoid getting hit by a flying bicycle. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen!”

Brick lifted higher into the air to avoid a parking meter. “Would have been fortunate to know about this ability a couple of minutes ago,” he shouted back. He glanced over his shoulder and jerked to the side as a stop sign soared past him. “I’d have some serious admiration for this thing if we weren’t the ones that had to get rid of it.”

I rolled my eyes even though I knew he was joking. Glancing down and noticing that there were more and more people in the area we were quickly moving into, running away in droves, I called to Brick, “There’s too many citizens here. Let’s go back!” And we immediately changed directions, flying back in the direction we’d come from and directly over the monster. Pausing in momentary confusion, the creature then made a wide turn against a tall nearby skyscraper, shattering windows and leaving puncture marks along the side of it, and came after us again, letting out a demented static-y cackle. I turned back to Brick as we flew. “Making it chase us isn’t enough. We need a plan B.”

Shouting and ducking out of the way as a sizeable chunk of the _road_ got thrown in his direction, Brick yelled, “Feel free to come up with one.”

“Give me a second,” I said through gritted teeth. Trying to think of a plan and avoid flying objects coming at me at the same time wasn’t exactly my forte. As if on cue, a smaller chunk of the road smacked me on the back of my head. I whipped my head around, looking back at the creature in annoyance. “ _Ow!_ ” The thing chortled at me.

“We can’t hit or kick it without risking getting impaled or stabbed by those stupid spikes,” Brick thought out loud. “And apparently the thing has impressive endurance levels, so chasing isn’t working either.”

Beginning to think clearer, an idea finally came to me. “Our powers. We’ll have to rely on using them to outsmart it. Maybe some misdirection—” I paused, allowing a slow smirk to spread on my face. “I think it would be pretty easy for one of us to distract it as the other attacks, considering it can only look in one direction with its whole body facing that way. And if this thing was frozen facing one direction, it probably couldn’t do much of anything."

The both of us ducked out of the way as an airborne motorcycle flew past us, and then Brick looked at me suddenly, catching onto my plan. “Yes! Do it,” he said. “I’ll distract it with my powers and make sure it doesn’t explode in the meantime. Go!”

I immediately lifted up higher into the air, continuing to follow them both from a high view. For a few more feet, Brick let the creature keep chasing. Then, abruptly, Brick stopped flying, spun around to face the monster, drew in a deep breath and spewed blistering fire breath directly in its face. The creature rolled backward, twitching and letting out crackles that sounded more like shrieks. Brick began circling it again, flying around it in fast, dizzying circles, breathing more fire on it as it continued to twitch and squeal. I lingered high above them, feeling the heat waves rising up from the fire down below and watching for the perfect moment to jump in.

In the space of a split second, Brick stopped his fire breath and sped away from the creature as it continued twitching. Seizing my chance, I took in a deep breath, then blew a long, icy tundra gust of wind at the monster.

Icy mist surrounded it, and at first the creature stopped moving as the gust covered it, as if it were disoriented by the sudden extreme temperature change. Then, as it seemingly realized what was happening, it reared back, moving so its face was groundward. Then it began to shake, looking like it was attempting to launch its spikes but the surrounding coldness was slowing its movements down.

“It’s working!” Brick shouted. “Keep going!”

I took another breath and blew again, and this time icicles began to form on the thing’s spikes, freezing them together in big clumps. It rolled backward again, its empty skull face being revealed. Slowly, shiny ice began to form on the ground around it, connecting the creature to the pavement and forcing it to stay put. It struggled, writhing around and trying to free itself, and the loud, static snickering that the monster made sounded like noises of panic.

I breathed in once more and let out one last, giant blast of frozen air, and this time frost coated the thing completely, encasing it in a massive, smooth, solid ball of ice. The spiky thing was completely frozen inside, and the skull face stared up at me in the air, bony jaw dropped as if it couldn’t believe what had just happened.

Proud, I took a moment to catch my breath. Floating lightly back to the ground, I turned toward my boyfriend, gesturing toward the glassy frozen globe. “I’ll let you do the honors,” I told him.

Brick looked at it eagerly, tempted, but then glanced back at me and reached for my hand. I put my hand in his and he brought it up to his lips, kissing it. “Together,” he said. I smiled.

We separated and walked some feet away from it, standing on either side. After another count of three, we flew at it at blurring speeds, coming at both sides with a flying kick at the same time. The sphere shattered against the simultaneous impacts, chunks of ice and snow-like particles flying everywhere, and the monster inside shattered along with it, bursting into tiny little pieces. I turned my face away from the cold explosion, and when things settled again, I walked over calmly to where the majority of the pieces of the monster lay on the pavement.

Solid white and solid black lumps of ice lay there, motionless. Squatting down close to it, though, I heard a faint static, like a fuzzy radio station turned almost all the way down. I glanced up at Brick. “Hear that?” I asked him. He nodded.

As we listened, it came to a complete stop, and there was only silence.

We went to go sit down on the sidewalk, not because we _needed_ a break but because we just wanted a few moments of peace. And predictably, within fifteen minutes, every news team in the area had come, reporters surrounding us and cameras swarming, taking footage of the wreckage, interviewing the few witnesses on the scene that had been taking cover, and taking footage of us as the reporters shouted questions at us.

“Please line up. Yes, we have some time to answer a few questions. We’ll answer them to the best of our ability,” I said to all of them as they thrust their microphones in our faces.

Brick placed one hand on my shoulder and held another one toward them, palm facing outward. “One at a time, please.”

One woman reporter shoved her way to the front, asking us the first question. “Blossom, what exactly was that creature the both of you just defeated?”

I took a breath, answering. “We don’t know exactly what it was. What we do know, though, was that it was a monster made from Chemical X.”

The next question came shouted from the back of the group. “How do you know?”

Pressing my lips together, I deliberated for a moment before answering, not sure if I should say it or not. After some thinking, though, I decided to say it anyway. “My father, Professor Utonium, told me.”

After a shocked pause, the reporters started shouting questions at us once again, and Brick held his hand out further, guarding me from them. “Hey, hey! One at a time! Easy!”

The next one came from my left. “Did Professor Utonium make these creatures?”

I shot the reporter a look. Were they kidding? “No, of course not. Professor hasn’t made any new experiments in years, and he would never make something so dangerous to the city.”

“What have you got to say about today’s battle, Rick?” Another reporter burst out. _‘Rick?!’_ I thought. I restrained an annoyed snort. That reporter was obviously new. How embarrassing.  

Brick cleared his throat, disgruntled. “First of all, my name’s Brick. Not Rick. Second, this battle was like any other battle. It was nothing we couldn’t handle. And if any more of these monsters come out of the woodwork, we’ll be able to handle those suckers, too. The city of Townsville has nothing to worry about.” After a curt smile at them, he slung an arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek, leading me away and saying to the reporters brusquely, “We have to go now. No more questions.”

The cameras flashed furiously at his display of PDA, and I blushed, unable to hide my smile. He was beginning to handle the superhero life well, I was impressed. He even knew how to work the media now.

The reporters continued to shout after us, but with a shared grin at my boyfriend, we took off into the sky together, holding hands again, leaving the rest of their questions to hang in the air.


	6. Sparks

**Chapter Five**

**-Blossom’s POV-**

Buttercup slammed her fist down onto the wood floor, making her can of cola topple over and leak. “We need to figure out what this is, and we need to do it _now_.”

Shooting her a pained look, I picked up her can, taking some napkins and wiping up the soda that had spilled on our dorm room’s nice wood floor. “Watch it. These are nice floors,” I muttered, then stood up to toss the soggy napkins into the trash can nearby. I continued, “And of course we have to figure this out soon. It’s just a matter of how.”

I went to go sit back down on the floor with both of my sisters, where for the past few minutes, we had been snacking and discussing our recent, peculiar battles in broad detail. I had just gotten back from the café, where Brick and I had gathered all of the things we’d left there from our study date earlier that day. When I arrived at the dorm a short time later, Bubbles and Buttercup had already been waiting for me, sitting on my bed and watching the news coverage of the attack on our TV.

Bubbles spoke up, tapping her sparkly manicured nails against her chin thoughtfully. “Well, who do we know that would be capable of something like this?” She reached down, screwing and unscrewing the lid on her bottled smoothie anxiously.

There was pause between all of us after her question. Buttercup broke the silence. “Him?” She suggested.

I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “The monsters seem like something he would create, but he wouldn’t need to use Chemical X to make them. He’d just use his own powers.” I sniffed, frowning. “Besides, we haven’t heard a peep out of Him for years. I think he’s lost interest in bothering us. Or maybe he’s retired.”

Buttercup snorted, folding her arms. “Probably resting at some old folks’ home for villains. Free Wi-Fi, an indoor pool, and weekly field trips where they rob banks in chaperoned groups.” Bubbles giggled.

“Come on guys, focus.” I said, smirking at Buttercup’s comment but shaking my head. “Keep brainstorming. There’s so few high-profile villains these days that this should be obvious. Who else would want to do this?”

There was another pause. Bubbles made the next suggestion. “Mojo, maybe? He’s obviously made Chemical X creations before.”

I nodded at her. “That’s true, he has. So he would already have the experience.” I pressed my lips together, frowning as I considered it further. “But when was the last time Mojo was even a formidable opponent to us? He couldn’t be capable of something _this_ creative. The last plan he attempted was his Citiesville plan with the boys, and obviously that didn’t work out at all. He’s definitely lost his touch. And on top of all that, we haven’t even seen him in ages. I mean, how do we even know that he’s still alive?”

Bubbles stared at me, her blue eyes big and grim. “Do you really think he’s dead?” Buttercup was staring at me too, munching noisily on her chips.

I shrugged at them both. “For all we know, he could be. He could also be hiding out somewhere. But I think it’s something we shouldn’t rule out.” I took a sip of my iced green tea, then set it down again. “We need to stay alert. This mystery threat could be anyone. It could even be someone new that we don’t know about yet.”

“But who would wanna make all these ugly monsters for no reason?” Buttercup wondered out loud, setting down her bag of chips. “And who would even _have_ Chemical X when Professor is supposed to be the only person allowed to have it?”

“That’s what I don’t understand, either,” said Bubbles, nodding. Her forehead was wrinkled in confusion. “And what about that weird symbol with the circles? What does it mean?”

“I don’t understand it either, girls. And I can’t explain why, but I have a bad feeling about all of this.” I looked between the two of my sisters, a somber look on my face. “There’s no telling how things will go from here. Promise me the both of you will be careful.”

My sisters nodded, equally serious expressions on the both of their faces.

After wrapping up our brainstorming session, we got some dinner from the cafeteria and then came back up to watch a movie on the flat screen TV, all piled up on my bed together. Then Bubbles left, and Buttercup and I went to bed, getting rest before our classes the next morning.

* * *

 

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

“I can’t believe you actually cleaned up in here,” I said, taking a step forward into Butch’s dorm room and stepping on an empty beef jerky bag. I kicked it aside just as I saw some empty soda cans by his bed. “Kinda,” I amended.

He gestured at it defensively. “To be fair, that bag was from this morning. That’s what I had for breakfast.”

Friday afternoon was one of the rare opportunities we had where Boomer, his roommate, was gone, and there would be no interruptions or awkward situations. Also, this time, he’d cleaned up his side of the room for once, and I could actually find his bed.

“This place looks much neater than Mojo’s old lair did, so I owe you some credit there. That place was like something out of a horror movie.” I jumped and landed on his bed, and the mattress squeaked underneath me. I cringed, continuing, “Ugh, wait, what am I saying? Being roomies with Blossom is starting to make me picker about how clean stuff is. I should spend more time over here.” The lair had been a disaster, though. It was amazing that they could even pick through the mess to find their belongings that they brought to college.

Butch chuckled, throwing his books onto the desk that he and Boomer shared. “You know you’re welcome over here anytime. I mean it. Even when Brick’s over here and we’re playing video games.” He raised his eyebrows at me to emphasize his point.

“Wow, I’m honored.” I said with mock sarcasm. Then, I crooked a finger at him, gesturing for him to come over. “Now get that sexy ass over here.”

Butch smirked. He turned around, bent over, backed up towards the bed and then pretended to sit on me. Laughing, I pushed him off of me, and he acted surprised. “You said to bring my ass over.”

I smacked a hand to my own face, groaning. “Oh my God, you’re so embarrassing.”

He lowered himself down on the bed next to me, his hair falling into his eyes, leering at me again. “You love it.”

“Shut up,” I groaned again, and he leaned in for a kiss.

We stayed that way for a few hours or so, for once not being all rough and frenzied like we could be sometimes. We were going slow, kissing; enjoying each other and getting lost in time. I felt drunk in the way that I always felt after being with him, warm and sleepy and embarrassingly happy. Butch was planting kisses all over my face when my phone buzzed on the table next to his bed.

Butch placed a soft kiss on the small stud in my nose, then groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

As I reached a hand towards the table, grabbing my phone, I said, “I just have to check and make sure it’s nothing important.” I opened the notification and relief washed over me. “Oh, good. It’s just a text message.”

Butch nipped my earlobe. “Ignore it, then.”

I eyed the text message. “It’s from Melissa, she’s in my Wing Chun club. She invited me to a party she’s throwing at her dorm.”

At my tone, Butch shook his head, leaning back and giving me a look of warning. “Buttercup.” His voice was flat.

I gave him a look in return. “What? When was the last time we even went to a party together?” I asked him defensively. “You don’t have any more classes today, right? Come on. Melissa’s cool. It’s Friday night. I gotta relax, things have been so stressful lately.”

My boyfriend looked at me for a long moment, then took my phone, reading the text message for himself. “So, it’s tonight?” His tone didn’t sound so unyielding now. He sounded like he was changing his mind.

“Yeah,” I said, already smiling hopefully. “In two hours. Please come with me. Please, please, please.”

With another pause, he blinked at me, then sighed. “Okay, I’ll go with you. I won’t know anyone there, though, so I don’t know if I’ll like it.”

I grabbed his face in my hands, smacking a kiss on his lips. “You’ll be with me, so you’ll love it.” I began getting out of his bed, climbing out from underneath him. As soon as I made it out of the sea of blankets, I lifted them again, smacked his bare butt, and scampered away laughing as he let out a shout of objection. I quickly pulled back on the clothes I’d been wearing earlier, tugging them into place and jumping back into my shoes. “Get ready, wear cool party clothes. I gotta go start getting ready, come pick me up at 9:45.”

He stared at me as I walked towards the door, still lying back leisurely in his bed. “It takes you almost _two hours_ to get ready?”

“For parties? Yes.” I opened the door, and before I closed it behind me, I shot him a look over my shoulder. “Look sexy for me.” I winked, slamming the door shut before he could reply.

I hurried back to my school, flying through the sky to my dorm building and locking myself in my dorm room as I prepared. An hour and forty five minutes later, Butch came knocking at my door. I opened it to let him in.

As soon as he saw me, he whistled. “Damn,” he said.

I felt a smirk spread on my face as I opened the door further so he could push past me. “You like?”

As soon as he walked past me into the room, he turned back around just to continue looking me up and down with a roguish glint in his eye. “Yes. Yes I do.”

I shut the door, smug. I knew I looked good. Party and club outfits were my specialty. I’d picked out my black pleather bustier, paired it with my tight dark green miniskirt and accessorized with fishnets, and black over the knee pleather boots and my black leather choker necklace. I also put product in my hair to make it perfectly messy and wild, and smeared my signature heavy dark makeup on my eyes.

I’d even went the extra mile and put on black lipstick, even though I never wore lipstick. I’d stolen it from Blossom’s makeup box; she’d used it for her Halloween costume this year. I had to say, it made me look delightfully wicked. I think my boyfriend thought so too, he couldn’t stop staring at me.

I stared back at him, raising my eyebrows. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” I told him. Understatement.

He smiled, waggling his eyebrows at me. “Sexy enough for you?” Butch was coincidentally wearing almost as much leather as I was wearing. Under his black leather biker jacket, which was adorned with zippers, band patches, and safety pins, his t-shirt underneath it had a skull smoking a cigarette on it. His black jeans—which had to be from high school, I hadn’t seen him wear jeans that tight in years—had rips and tears all over them, exposing his skin underneath. His hair was pulled into a teeny ponytail that stuck out at the back of his head, exposing the shaved areas on the sides of his head. He looked delicious.

Almost shuddering, I got a hold of myself. “Yup. Definitely,” I said to him, eyeing him up and down again. I walked past him, grabbing my phone off my bedside table, throwing on my leather jacket, then heading back towards the door. “Let’s head over.”

After walking to Melissa’s dorm building, then taking the elevator to her floor, we stepped into the party the moment we left the elevator.

The party was already in full swing, spilled out into the entire hallway with dancing bodies and dance music playing so loud that it thumped in my throat.

Taking Butch’s hand, I wound through the crowd, already starting to sway my hips to the music. I was already on the hunt for alcohol when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to face whoever had tapped me.

It was Melissa. Her ink black, curly hair was already wilder than usual, stark against her neon orange crop top, and her face was flushed. Her thick black eyeliner almost matched mine. “Hey girl, you made it!” She shouted above the music, even though I could’ve heard her just fine if she hadn’t.

“Yeah!” I said, shouting so she could hear me. I pointed back at Butch, who waved. “This is my boyfriend. I forced him to come with me.”

Melissa laughed, waving back at Butch. “I’m glad you did. Nice to meet you!” She said to him, raising her red solo cup in his direction, and then she took a sip of her drink, saw me eyeing it, and shouted to me, “The drinks are in my room, room 53! Down that way!” She pointed all the way to the middle of the hallway, where a door was propped open.

“Thanks!” I began to make my way there now, shouting at her over my shoulder, “See you around!”

I towed Butch behind me, getting jostled left and right as we made our way to the open door. Finally arriving there, an even bigger crowd of people was before us. For half a second, I wondered if half of these people even went to our school. Melissa must have announced the party on one of her multiple social media accounts. Or all of them. She did have like, 10,000 friends, or something like that.

“God, it’s loud,” Butch said to me, leaning in close to me from behind. “And cramped. It’s like a metal concert in here.”

I laughed as I pushed my way through one last throng of people, and there was an opening, revealing the table with drinks on it in red solo cups.

Walking over, I stopped in front of it, huffing impatiently. “Finally,” I said, picking up a cup for my boyfriend, handing it to him, and then one for myself. I immediately took a gulp, then gagged, jerking back the cup to look inside it. “Holy shit, did someone mix an entire liquor cabinet into this?”

Butch took a sip too, then cringed. “Whoa, man. Brutal.”

I tossed back some more, swallowing before I could taste it, then laughed. “Whatever. At least it’s strong.”

Since college started, and I’d gotten over my holier-than-thou aversion to alcohol instilled in me by Blossom, I’d since learned that the Chemical X in our bloodstream burns through alcohol pretty quickly. It was hard for us to get drunk, and if we wanted to feel the effects at all, we had to go for something way stronger than beer. Not _mixed an entire liquor cabinet’s contents_ strong, but I supposed it would do.

We stood there for a while, drinking down our drinks and talking, and I started to feel heat pooling in my chest. Just as I finished the drink, I had to use the bathroom, so I told him to wait there as I took off in search of the bathroom.

The bathroom was gross, as expected—people throwing up and girls crying all of the mascara off of their eyelashes. I went to the bathroom as fast as I could manage and got out of there.

When I came back, it took me a minute or two to find Butch through the pulsing hordes of bodies. But when I did, I was immediately lit with fury.

Three equally leggy and tan blonde girls surrounded him, all giggly and flirty as he kept trying to leave, clearly unimpressed and annoyed. They kept blocking his way, laughing like it was funny. “Where are you going, sexy?” One of them asked. “Don’t you want my number?”

I plowed the rest of my way over, seething and roughly pushing past everyone that stood in front of me. Arriving, blood boiling, I shoved through the Wall of Blondes, nearly knocking one of them over as they squawked in astonishment. Striding right to Butch, I grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him languorously and territorially on his lips. Before we broke apart, I bit his bottom lip and tugged down on it, turning my eyes to the three girls and grinning mockingly at their scandalized faces.

“Excuse us, ladies.” I said as Butch locked his arms around me from behind, dipping his head down and pressing a kiss to the side of my neck. I could practically feel his smile as we turned away and the blonde triplets hurried away, gawking at me in outrage and jealousy.

After pausing by a wall, where there were less people standing, Butch turned me around to face him. He looked delighted. “Well, damn,” he said. He licked his bottom lip, swollen where I’d bitten him. I guess I’d been a little too enthusiastic. Oh well, he’d heal fast. “Someone’s a little possessive, aren’t we?”

“Not possessive.” I swiped off the small amount of lipstick I’d left on his lips, then pressed a fingertip gently to the swollen curve of his bottom lip, looking into his forest green eyes and shrugging. “Just protecting what’s mine,” I said. The wide grin on his face melted, and his eyes darkened, locking with mine. An electric charge pulsed between us. Just then, the song changed to a guitar-heavy rock song, and I took both of his hands, pulling him back to the center of the room where everyone was dancing. “Now come dance with me, Rowdyruff Boy.”

We made our way back into the heavy throng of dancers and danced together, sleepy heat coursing through my veins and sweat dripping off my skin as I grinded back into him, his hands grabbing and feeling all over me.

With no further nuisances and interruptions, the both of us drank and danced the whole night. When the night was over, we stumbled back to my dorm early the next morning before the sun came up. We slept in past noon, tangled up on my tiny bed in a pile of wild black hair and leather and limbs and the bitter scent of liquor.

* * *

 

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

A sharp knock came against my door, and the next second came the sardonic voice of our sorority house mother, “Bubbles, you know the house rules. Do you have a boy in there?”

My eyes widened, turning to stare over at Boomer, who sat on my bed against my pillows and giant Rilakkuma plush. He was staring back at me, eyes big with apprehension, and he slapped a hand over his mouth. I turned to the door again, calling out unconvincingly, “Me? No, of course not!”

Friday afternoon, when both of us had no more classes for the day, I’d snuck him into the sorority house. He’d flown up to my window, and I’d let him in—the same way he used to sneak into my bedroom late at night during high school. Oddly enough, we’d never been caught by Professor back then. So it figured that the first time we got caught was when I was in a large house with thirty other girls.

I heard the house mother chuckle at my obvious lie from the other side of the door. “All right, I get it. Just be safe in there. Use protection!” My face exploded in a hot flush as I heard her laughter and footsteps retreat.

“Um, okay,” I answered her awkwardly, even though she was probably too far away to hear me. I turned back to Boomer quickly. My heart was pounding faster than its usual quick, inhuman pace. “She was just joking!”

God. I couldn’t believe she’d said that, and right in front of my _boyfriend_. I wanted to crawl underneath my bed and hide.

Boomer kept his voice low, looking a little red-faced at the joke himself. Nervously side stepping it, he said, “I’m not getting you in trouble, am I? We could go back to my dorm instead, if you want.”

Secretly thankful that he’d changed the subject, I shook my head, waving him off with a hand. “Liz? No way, don’t worry, she doesn’t care. She’s cool. Plus, I’m her favorite. She’d never get me in trouble.” I liked to think that me and the house mother, Liz, had a special bond. She was young, in her late twenties, and the first day of school, I’d given her makeup advice. We’d been close ever since.

“All right. If you think it’s okay,” Boomer said, shrugging, and then he waved me over and patted the space on the bed next to him. “Get over here. It’s cold over here by myself.”

I climbed onto my bed next to him, snuggling into his side as he brought me in close. “I’m glad you’re here. We never get to hang out in my room, and you’ve only seen it once.” I gestured widely to the room. “You like?”

He looked around at everything, nodding slowly. “It looks almost like your room at home.” He squinted in thought. “Not as much stuffed animals as I expected.”

“I could only bring half of them, this is all that would fit,” I explained very seriously. He ‘ahh-ed’ in understanding. “I had to bring as much as possible, though. I wanted it to look super cute.”

Turning his face closely to the side of my head, he leaned in and kissed my hair, and then he said, “It’s not as cute as you are, though.”

I felt my face heat up again. “If you say so.”

Boomer ‘mhmm’ed, then leaned even closer, kissing my ear lobe. “Nothing is as cute as you are.”

I squirmed at the soft, ticklish sensation, suddenly growing shy. I asked, trying to distract him, “What about bunnies? They’re way cuter than me.”

“They could only dream of being as cute as you,” he answered easily. He kissed directly under my ear lobe, right on my pulse.

I swallowed hard, proceeding with another distraction attempt and asking, “What about puppies? Kittens?”

“Nope.” His breath blew out in a chuckle, and it fanned across my neck warmly. “Not even they can compare.” He gently pressed his lips against the sensitive skin of my throat.

My mind was beginning to feel hazy, and my heart felt like it was thumping in my throat, directly under his lips, and I was positive that he could feel it. Out of nowhere, I blurted, “Wanna watch a movie?”

Boomer stopped pressing soft, fluttery kisses on my neck and leaned back, seeming taken off guard. “Oh,” he paused, blinking at me and slowly letting me go. “Sure, sweetie. If you want to.”

I scrambled back on my bed, crawling away from him and hopping off of my bed, going over to my bookshelf where I had some movies stacked up on the third shelf. Thankful that I was now facing away from him, I could get a hold of myself and gain back my composure. I slowed my breathing.

This happened every time we were alone— _alone in a private space_ —lately. He would get comfortable and cuddly and affectionate and suddenly my nerves would go haywire. For the entire time we’d been dating, this hadn’t happened to me before. I mean, when we had first gotten together, I was nervous and jittery around him a lot. But this was different. It felt different, and I wasn’t sure what it was.

…Actually, I knew exactly what it was. I just couldn’t admit it to myself. Maybe because thinking about it made me even more nervous.

“So,” I said to him, still facing the shelves. “What do you feel like watching? A comedy, maybe? I have a few of those. Or maybe an animated one? I have some Studio Ghibli movies.” He wasn’t answering because I barely paused long enough to let him answer. I couldn’t stop talking. “I also have some TV shows on DVD. We could marathon one of them if you want, and we could order food from some place and have it delivered and—”

“Baby.” His voice was directly behind me. Very gently, from behind, he wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. I hadn’t even heard him stand up. How long had he been behind me?

My heart was pounding again. I swallowed hard. “Yes?”

His arms tightened ever so slightly. “Are you all right?”

I tried to keep my breathing even. I’d known he’d been able to tell that something was off. He always could. As calmly as I could manage, I told him, “Yeah. I’m okay. Why?”

Boomer tilted his head forward so he could look at my face better. I wasn’t meeting his gaze, and I knew he’d noticed that, too. “No reason,” he said finally, giving me another squeeze and pulling away. “I was just making sure.” Then, he pointed to one of the movies on the shelf. “Why don’t we watch that one? It’s one of your favorites, right?”

After I agreed, I put the movie into my laptop, plugged in my lantern string lights and turned off the big light, and we settled back onto my bed as it started, although less cuddled up than before.

Twenty minutes into the movie, I was strongly regretting making the lighting dimmer. I’d thought the dimmer light would calm me down, but for some reason, it was making me even more anxious. I was more aware of Boomer than ever, and every time he would glance over at me it felt like my skin was lighting up with a thousand volts of energy.

Instead of quoting the movie word for word, the way I always did when I watched this movie, I was completely and utterly silent, staring past the laptop screen and trying to stay calm.

I began to fidget, my hands ringing together and un-ringing and ringing again and my sparkly fingernails were tapping together and I couldn’t seem to control it. It felt like I was blinking too often. Why was I blinking so much? Suddenly, it felt like it was impossible to breathe quietly, and every breath in and out of my nose sounded like a freight train. Was it just me, or was my breathing really that loud?

I couldn’t even concentrate on the movie. What were we even watching, anyway? I couldn’t remember. I wondered if I was going crazy. Was I going crazy? Why did my heartbeat feel like two boulders knocking together? Why did Boomer smell so amazing? Was he watching me right now? What if he could tell that I was freaking out?

“Sweetie,” he said suddenly, choosing to speak at the most totally untimely moment ever. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Startled, I turned and looked at him, intending to answer—and froze. It was like my brain just stopped working and my body went into overload. My hands shook, my face exploded, flushed and red, and breathing was difficult. His hair was pushed out of his eyes, the dim light was hitting him just right and his eyes were lidded and I didn’t know what came over me but I _pounced_ on him.

I pounced on him so hard that the both of us went careening off the bed and onto the floor—my hands tangled in his hair and my lips crashing onto his. For a moment, he was frozen underneath me, in shock. Then he wound his arms around me and began to kiss back, a slight smile curving his lips.

After about a minute that we’d been on the floor making out, I finally came to my senses, pulling my lips away from his and gaping at myself in shock. “Oh my God,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

Boomer was dazed, eyes glazed, goofy grin and hair mussed and tangled. “Why are you apologizing?” He reached up, tucking some hair behind my ear that had fallen into my face. “Please, continue.”

I leaned back on my heels shakily, my face as red as ever. I couldn’t believe I’d just done that. “I don’t know what came over me,” I muttered, gesturing at him. “I just attacked you like some animal.”

“Yes, yes you did,” he said, still grinning widely and leaning up from the floor on his elbows. “Feel free to do that whenever you want.”

Still completely astonished at myself, I partially covered my face with one hand. “I’m lucky we didn’t break anything. Liz would have killed me.” Sitting on the ground, cross legged, I sighed. “Can I tell you something?”

Boomer sat up, sitting like I was and facing me. “Shoot,” he said.

Hesitating, somehow even more embarrassed at what I was about to admit, I sighed again. It was time to tell him. “I’ve…” I paused, dropping my head to look at my hands. “I’ve been wanting to do…that…for a while now.”

My boyfriend cocked his head at me questioningly. “What, kiss me, you mean? Bubbles, you can kiss me whenever you want to.”

My voice was quiet. “That’s not what I meant.” The room pulsed with stillness, the only sound coming from the movie, which still continued to play on my laptop up on my bed.

“Oh,” he paused for a moment, staring at me. Possibly seeing how I wasn’t meeting his gaze again, he finally gasped in understanding. “ _Oh_. You mean…you want to have sex?”

I bit down hard on my lip, my entire body bursting into a new round of blushing. I was probably bright red all the way down to my toes. Slowly, and very slightly, I nodded.

Boomer scooted closer to me until our knees touched, and his voice came out gently. “What’s so wrong about that? There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” He leaned his face closer, but I still didn’t look him in the face. “We’re in love. It’s a perfectly normal thing to want. I’ve wanted to, too. For a very long time.”

I squirmed, some of my mortification waning. Hearing him confess it too made me feel reassured. “I just didn’t know how to tell you,” I admitted. “So it’s just been building up inside of me and—” I stopped, biting my lip again.

He chuckled. “I’m glad you told me. It’s important that we talk about things like this.” He tucked two fingers under my chin and slowly lifted my face up. “I never want you to feel scared or embarrassed to talk to me about things. Especially if it’s about how you feel. Okay?”

Finally looking at him now, the warmth in his eyes had immediately calmed me again. “Can I tell you something else?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Anything.”

This time, I locked eyes with him, and I didn’t look away as I said, “Boomer, I trust you. But I’m scared. Of going too fast.”

Lifting both of his hands now, he placed them both on the sides of my face. “Whenever we decide to take that step, whenever you’re ready, we’ll take our time. I promise.” He leaned in and kissed my forehead.

I closed my eyes, soaking in the warmth of his skin against my skin. “Can I tell you one more thing?”

He kissed my forehead once more. “Tell me,” he said.

I opened my eyes. “I love you.”

Boomer slouched down, matching my height, and brought his forehead down to mine, resting it there. Our blonde hair mixed together, surrounding the both of our faces like a curtain shielding us from the rest of the world. His eyes stared into mine. “I love you, Bubbles.” Then he leaned in, closing the last inch between our lips.

I unfolded my legs as we lay back on the floor again, and I broke apart from him briefly to ask, “What about the movie?”

His breath blew out across my face in a silent chuckle. “Screw the movie.”

Agreeing, I burst into giggles, since I had seen this movie at least 300 times before anyway, and he kissed me again. We kissed the afternoon away.

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

After a peaceful two days passed without incident, things had begun to return back to normal.

With less questions plaguing my mind, I found the time to go back to my studies, focusing my full attention on my classes. I finished three essays, put the finishing touches on my paper that was due the next Monday, and even got all of my reading done. Getting through all of my homework that I had at the moment, I finally had some extra time that Sunday to hang out with the whole gang.

Since it was the third week of November, sunny days were becoming scarce. This day was a particularly sunny day, and pretty warm considering what month it was, so we decided to take advantage of the great weather and hang out at the park that afternoon.

Putting on a comfortable outfit of pink tights under shorts and a soft pullover white sweater with a pink scarf, I was ready to go. We packed a picnic basket full of food and drinks—well, Bubbles and I packed it, Buttercup kept taking things out of it to eat—we brought a blanket with us to sit on, and we met the boys at Townsville Park.

Townsville Park was my favorite place to be in the autumn. The leaves had already long changed into hues of orange, reds, browns and gold, and annoying bugs were nowhere to be seen. Hot chocolate and hot apple cider carts opened throughout various areas in the park, along with candy apple stands. Families and couples gathered to take pictures with the colorful leaves and enjoy the last rays of sun before winter came to freeze everything. Autumn had always been one of my favorite times of year. It’s the season of changes and when people come together again to find warmth and familiarity.

Making our way through the park, we walked past the dormant volcano that Mojo’s abandoned lair still sat on the top of, dark and cold. It was crazy how a place that had such a significant place in our past had become so irrelevant in our lives.

Without the malevolent bite it used to have, the lair had become somewhat a city landmark, with regular groups of tourists coming and going to take pictures of it. A cold, empty landmark. Nothing more.

After a while of just strolling through the park, enjoying the views and watching as the boys pushed each other into giant piles of fallen leaves, all of us found a nice area beside the lake, spread out our blanket and sat.

I sat between Brick’s legs, lying back against him as I ate some apple slices. Every once in a while I would look up behind me and offer him one too, which he would accept by opening his mouth and letting me clumsily shove the slice inside. Bubbles and Boomer were both lying down side by side on their stomachs and leaning up with their elbows as they talked, and Buttercup and Butch were sitting cross-legged, facing each other and trying to toss pieces of popcorn into each other’s mouths. The weather continued to hold up, and Canadian geese on the lake next to us swum on top of the water serenely.

This was the most peaceful afternoon I’d had in months, since summer, and the happy calm that surrounded us all felt wonderful. In fact, it felt perfect. So I should have known that it wasn’t going to last.

The moment I realized that, though, was about an hour after we’d been sitting there, the exact moment things started to go wrong.

At once, in an unexpected moment, all of the Canadian geese on the lake took off into the sky and flew away over us, every single one of them.

They made a huge racket, honking and flapping high above us as we stared upward at them, and Buttercup and Butch were making jokes about how we scared them off by doing nothing. Brick and I laughed along with them for a few moments, thinking nothing of the relatively normal moment, but when I noticed Boomer and Bubbles, I stopped.

The both of them had stood up, with Bubbles closely observing the direction that the geese had flown off in with squinted eyes. Boomer was staring at her with a questioning look. The look on her face was so grim that I immediately felt uneasy.

I nudged Brick, gesturing for him to look at them. He did, and then the smile on his face dropped into a frown.

“Baby? What is it?” Boomer asked Bubbles in a worried tone, putting both hands on her shoulders. This caused Butch and Buttercup to realize something was going on, and the both of them looked over, quieting.

“Shh,” Bubbles held up one finger in Boomer’s direction, concentrating hard. Then she slowly turned around, now facing the direction the geese had flown away from. Her eyes stared out to where more of the park, the less populated part of it, stretched beyond the lake, where dark clouds had formed seemingly out of nowhere. “Don’t you hear that?”

Boomer frowned, confused and watching the direction she was looking in. “What is that noise?”

“Bubbles?” Buttercup, just like the rest of us, was watching her carefully. “Are you okay, Blondie?”

Bubbles was still staring out, almost as if in a trance. “No,” she said finally, distractedly. “Something’s wrong.” She paused again, not taking her eyes away from the dark distance. “Don’t you hear them?”

The rest of us except for Boomer—who was now absorbed by something himself—were bewildered now, having no idea what she was talking about. We all exchanged looks with each other.

“Hear who, Bubbles?” I asked her warily. I couldn’t deny that there was something wrong—the hair rose on my arms, and something about the atmosphere felt very off. And from far away…a sound. I could hear it now that I was listening. A peculiar sound.

Bubbles opened her mouth to answer, then abruptly gasped with a look of alarm. Backing up, whipping around and grabbing Boomer’s arm, she dove to the ground, pulling him down with her. “Get down!”

Before any of us even had a chance to respond, the biggest mass of birds I’d ever seen exploded from the direction Bubbles had been staring in, coming in our direction. There were so many that it looked like a thick, dark cloud. All of us threw ourselves face down against the picnic blanket as they passed directly over us, crowing and tweeting and flapping right above our heads.

Just as the birds passed us, mine and my sisters’ phones went off at the exact same time. Slowly sitting up from the ground, watching the mass collectively fly away, all of us exchanged looks of open mouthed shock and dread.

My sisters and I fished our phones out frantically. “The birds were scared of something. They were warning us,” Bubbles said to us, pulling out her phone from her pocket. “That’s why they were flying away. And those sounds in the distance. Do you hear them?”

“Yes,” I said immediately as I pulled out my phone, understanding what she was talking about. The strange, far off noise. That was what I heard. It was still going on—a rumbling yet high frequency noise of some kind. It was closer now. “Something’s coming. What do you think it is?”

Immediately after I stopped speaking, we began to hear the screams of citizens. Then, even worse—a loud BOOM. The ground shook underneath us, and in the populated part of the park behind us, the families and couples and kids all began running away, a scene of chaos for the fourth time in just one week.

At the same time, my sisters and I opened the Hotline notification, reading it. At the sight of the words on my phone’s screen, a shockwave pulsed through my body. It felt like my stomach had dropped down to the picnic blanket. Tearing my eyes away from the screen, I looked up at Bubbles, whose eyes were huge with fear, and then Buttercup, whose face had become steely. All three of us stood up.

All three of the guys were staring up at us, waiting for one of us to say something. “Well?” Brick prodded. “What is it this time? Another monster?” He began to stand up from the blanket.

I shook my head at him slowly, trying to swallow back my dread, and read the crime alert aloud, “’Emergency alert: army of monsters moving through downtown and coming toward Townsville Park.’”

Butch jumped up, standing, and then snatched Buttercup’s phone out of her hands, reading the screen in alarm, and Boomer and Brick stared at me in disbelief. Boomer’s voice rose, shooting up from his seated position and getting onto his feet. “What do you mean, _army_?”

“There’s no way. That has to be wrong,” Brick said, shaking his head and continuing to stare at me as he stood. “Maybe it was a typo.”

Slowly putting my phone back into my pocket, I shook my head too and said, “I don’t think the alert would say it was an army unless it truly was one. Ms. Bellum doesn’t make mistakes.”

“The birds,” Bubbles said faintly. She still had her phone held in front of her face, but rather than reading what the screen said again, it looked like she was staring through it. “They were absolutely terrified. And if it’s a whole army…” she trailed off.

“We’re probably screwed,” Buttercup finished for her. She snatched her phone back from Butch and shoved it into the pocket of her tight jeans, turning to me. “So, what now, Red? Where do go from here?”

They were all looking at me. Pressing my lips into a line as I had a few moments of thought, I said decidedly, “We have no other choice. We have to protect the city.” Taking a moment to look toward the ominous, empty direction that the birds had flown from, I looked at my companions again. I took my scarf off, dropping it to the picnic blanket below. I would come back to get it after the battle. “Let’s go meet this so-called army.”

Leaving our peaceful picnic behind, my sisters, the boys and I lifted into the air, flying to go meet whatever was coming to us before it could do any more damage.

Townsville Park was large, but it didn’t take long at all to find what we were looking for. In less than a minute, we arrived, and we found it—well, them—at the exact same time they found us. All of us stopped in our tracks, levitating and staring in horror.

“ _No,_ ” I heard Boomer say. Bubbles covered her mouth with her hands. Buttercup and Butch cursed at the same time. My heart caught in my throat as Brick murmured, “Mother of God.”

We couldn’t tear our eyes away from them.

All of them. All white, all huge, whispering, tittering, bellowing. Jaws snapping, feet stomping, writhing like a living white ocean, moving and closing in on us.

There were spiky, spherical ones like Brick and I had fought, ones that looked just like the one Butch and Buttercup battled with grotesque, fanged smiles, ones that towered over the rest on their twelve legs just like Bubbles and Boomer’s monster, plus more that none of us had even seen before. There were ones that flew, ones that slithered on the ground like snakes, ones that had two or more heads. All were equally gruesome to behold.

A heavy static sound emanated from all of them, and it also strangely charged the surrounding air, feeling thick enough in the atmosphere to start a lightning storm.

The sheer number of them was impossible. Eyes scanning quickly, I counted—ten, twenty, thirty-five…fifty. Fifty exactly. Fifty white, mutant Chemical X monsters, with the three circle symbol branded onto every single one of them.

Completely surrounding us.


	7. Gods & Monsters

**Chapter Six**

**-Blossom’s POV-**

The disgusting army stretched out in front of us, large, never-ending and completely unbelievable. Part of me hoped that I would blink and wake up, and that this was just some fever induced nightmare, and that none of this was real. But I kept blinking. And they were still there, staring back at me with their countless lifeless black eyes.

“How is this possible?” I asked all of my companions. “How is this happening? How?” I counted the white mass of creatures again. Still fifty. I hadn’t imagined it. This was real.

Brick answered my questions with another question. “Where did they all come from?”

“Good one, genius. It’s a little late to be asking that,” Buttercup snapped at him. She let out a shout of frustration. “We should have tracked down whoever’s been doing this back when it first started a week ago. Then we wouldn’t have to deal with _this_ now.” She gestured to the army with one giant sweep of her arm.

“Well, it’s also a little late for should-haves, isn’t it?” Brick remarked, looking at her darkly. Buttercup shot him an icy glare.

Butch glowered at his brother too, barking, “Shut up, Brick.”

In warning, Brick turned his glare to Butch. “You watch yourself,” he snarled.

“Easy,” said Boomer, looking between both of his brothers, extending a hand towards both of them, ready to separate them if he needed to.

“Blossom, what are we going to do?” Bubbles asked me, turning to me with panic all over her face. She spoke loud so she could be heard over the noise of the army and the others arguing. “One was hard enough to fight. How are we going to take on _all_ of these? There’s only six of us!”

I had my forehead nestled in my hands, digging my fingernails into my scalp, trying hard to shut out all of the noise. “Would everyone just stop arguing, shut the hell up and let me think for five freaking seconds?” I yelled.

Everyone quieted instantly, and all I could hear was the sound of the shrieking, braying, buzzing creature army around us. I dropped my hands.

Brick came right over to me, resting his forehead against mine. “We can figure this out. I know this is intense, but you have to concentrate. Think, baby. Think hard.”

I resisted the urge to cave. I would not cave under this enormous pressure. I had to stay calm. I had to think. “I’m trying,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I felt my hands shaking.

He placed his hands on either side of my face, whispering, “This can’t be that hard. We can handle this. We can handle this just like we handled the other attacks.”

Something clicked inside my mind, like a light switch turning on. My eyes snapped back open, and I looked directly into his eyes. “You mean work in pairs again?”

His red gaze boring back into mine, he nodded. “You know all of us work best in coordination. If each pair focused on one kind of monster at a time, it’ll be easier.”

“We’ve already fought at least half of these before, so we already know at least half of their weaknesses,” I murmured, finishing his thought. “So we take those out first, then leave the mystery ones for last, for all of us to take down together.”

“Exactly,” he said, grinning at me with electric anticipation. “And we’ll feel it out from there with teamwork.”

If our respective siblings and an entire flock of monsters weren’t staring at us right then, I would’ve kissed him so hard. “You’re fantastic,” I said, taking in a deep breath, feeling hope and energy beginning to pump through my veins, preparing me for our plan.

“So are you.” He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead, then pulled away, looking around at our four other battle partners. “You hear the plan, guys?”

Everyone nodded. “Yep,” Boomer said. The usual laid-back, calm quality on his features were gone, replaced with rock hard aggression.

“It’s good,” Buttercup said. She was already looking eager to carry it out. Her hands were clenched into shaking fists at her sides, and her green eyes were ablaze. “I think it’ll work.”

“I think it’s great.” Bubbles chimed in. Recognizing the steely look in her eyes that she always had during battles, I knew she was prepared, too. “I’m ready when you guys are.”

Butch had been staring out at the sea of monsters. “They’re just watching us. It’s like they’re waiting for us to make the move first.” He looked at us, looking pensive and wary. “It’s like they came here looking for a fight.”

A moment of silence passed between all of us as we stared out back at them. Even though hostility was emanating from them, it was indeed like they were waiting for us to do something. It wasn’t just peculiar, it was…unheard of. I glowered out at them, turned back to my teammates, then said, “Then let’s give them a fight.”

We turned around to face them completely, and their noises got even louder. Deafening screeches, demented cackling, unearthly whispers, and static buzzing filled the air, echoing loudly in my ears.

Feeling the adrenaline taking over my body, spitting fire through my veins, I said to my companions, “Remember the plan, everyone. Stick to the type of monsters you defeated last week so that there are no surprises. Show no mercy.” Lining up, counterpart by each counterpart, everyone readied themselves, preparing to fly. Glancing over at Brick, clenching all of my muscles and getting myself ready, I nodded at him, giving him the signal to make the call.

Ominously, he nodded back, turning and facing the army again. Then, after a hefty, tense half second, Brick took a deep breath and thundered, “ _Attack!_ ”

With a surge of movement, we charged, advancing through the air toward our enemies with speeds that nearly broke the sound barrier. Likewise, the creatures lurched forward—galloping, slithering, rolling, ambling, coming straight for us, closing in and swallowing us up completely.

It was immediate pandemonium.

Coming in with my heat vision to clear anything in my path, and ducking past a flying creature with 6 dragonfly-like wings, I barreled straight towards the first spherical monster that I laid eyes on. With its hollow eyes on me, it reared back, face disappearing as it prepared to launch its spikes into the air.

Breathing in, I gusted a frozen tundra in its direction, making the spikes freeze to its body. It shuddered, making shrieking chortles as it froze to the ground, and after breathing out one last thick haze of ice, I came at it from the air with both of my fists pounding it down, smashing it into tiny pieces of icy chunks and then landing on my feet.

In the same moment, out of the corner of my eye, I caught Buttercup flying straight to a skinny, four legged creature, landing with her feet against its protruding ribs, grabbing both of its arms in her hands and then flying backward at high speed, ripping them off its body. It let out an earsplitting scream. Turning my head, I saw Butch similarly, viciously, tearing the legs off of an identical creature as it wailed to the heavens.

The next second, several objects pierced my skin in the back of my legs and my back, and I cried out in pain and surprise, spinning around and frantically pulling the spikes out of me, leaving several puncture holes in the fabric of my clothes. Past the holes, I saw the multiple stab wounds throbbing hard, closing up quicker than usual from the extra Chemical X that coated the spikes.

Turning and looking ahead, I saw my attacker: spherical, white, smaller than the last one. Its replacement spikes were only just starting to come up in the empty spaces, making its body mostly smooth, and I acted quickly. I leapt high into the air, flying up and then soaring back down. Coming down at it full speed with both feet, I stomped it hard, and to my surprise it _squelched_ onto the ground. Like the soft body of a jelly fish, it disintegrated into mush under my feet. It bubbled, buzzed, and then was silent. The only part left was the skull face—shockingly flat without it resting on the spherical body.

‘That’s why it uses the spikes to ward off direct bodily attacks,’ I thought, flummoxed. I picked up the skull face with both hands, which was grimacing at me instead of grinning. I seared it with my heat vision until it became ash, floating down to the ground.

There was a giant crash against the ground, making me lose my balance and sending me toppling over into the black and white goo that used to be the creature I was fighting. I grimaced down at the mess all over me, standing up and trying to wipe some of it off my pink, now ruined tights.

Then, after a thought came to me, I reached into my shorts pocket, taking out one of the handkerchiefs that I always kept with me. It was pink, and engraved with ‘Utonium’ calligraphy. I reached down, gingerly scooping up some black goop and some white, jelly-like flesh, placing it into the handkerchief, carefully wrapping it back up inside it and stuffing it inside my pocket. Since I had no plastic bags with me, this would have to do.

With no warning, Bubbles sped past me, nearly knocking me over again, and I watched as she flew up into the underside of one of the tall mutant spiders that loomed above, aiming a flying punch at its human-like eight eyes. The thing stood no chance against the impact, and it launched backwards, landing belly-and-eyes-side up some ways away on top of some other monsters. She chased after it, curled her hands into fists and launched an explosion of blue electricity directly at it, which electrocuted it and made its legs stick straight out. Lastly, she came down at its body with a fierce one-two punch kick combo, and black liquid came spurting out of it as its legs curled up.

Likewise, Boomer was swinging another twelve legged creature around by its legs, and he threw it against a large nearby tree. A resounding cracking noise came from both the creature and the tree’s trunk, and then he charged down at it with his fists, finishing the job.

Turning away and looking up towards the sky for my boyfriend, then finding him fighting a spherical creature at least eight times larger than the ones I had fought and the one we had fought together, I shouted up at him. “Brick! Go for the body!”

Pausing mid-flight, he looked down at me, confounded. “What? Do you _want_ me to get impaled?”

“No!” Seeing a mid-size sphere monster rolling toward me at high speed, I yelled up at him again. “Just watch me!”

Coming at the monster before it could reach me first, making sure it could see me, I stood there right in front of it as it reared back. I hit the ground, making myself as flat as possible against the dead grass as the thing launched its spikes, flying up in all directions. Being as flat against the ground as I was, they completely missed me.

As soon as it was safe, I jumped back up. Taking off up into the sky, glancing back at Brick again to make sure he was watching, I came back down fast with one leg. Before more spikes could grow out of whatever jelly substance it was composed of, my foot crushed against the monster, and just like the last one, it squished into white and black goop under my shoe, splashing in every direction. Landing and then locating the skull face and finding it, I stamped down on it, making it crack apart like a ceramic plate.

“Holy shit! Wicked!” Brick cried, grinning roguishly from ear to ear. “That just made this a whole lot easier!” He turned back to the giant globe of a creature, heckling it by smacking his lips together in a mocking air kiss. “Give me your best shot, sugar lips.”

The massive thing laughed at him, a deep-throated, slow, static-y cackle, then began to rear back, its big skull face rolling back and disappearing.

Brick cupped his hands around his mouth. “Everyone take cover!” He bellowed, diving to the grass. Our teammates and siblings heard him, all of them abruptly dropping down against the ground and behind other monsters. I threw myself against the ground again.

The huge sphere erupted, letting loose its tree trunk sized spikes and sending them soaring in every direction. They shot through trees, soared off into the sky towards other parts of the city, and went splicing through countless other monsters nearby—through wings, through necks, through torsos, splitting others completely in half. Buttercup, Boomer and Butch were hooting and laughing and hollering their exhilarated approval, and Bubbles shrieked in horror at the sight.

As soon as it was safe to get up, I leapt from the ground, shouting, “Now!”

Brick took off into the sky, flying up so high that the dark clouds completely swallowed up his form. The next second, he was barreling back down in a burning red streak, hurtling himself into the smooth, spikeless white globe, and it burst, black and white spurting and splattering everywhere. It coated the ground, making it slick and hard to walk on, coated other monsters, causing them to screech, and drenched all of us.

Completely coated in black goo, Brick stood up, walked over to the giant skull face and just like I did, stomped it with his foot, causing it to splinter into pieces.

Wiping slime off my face before I opened my mouth, I nodded and said to him with approval, “Nice work.”

“Hey, can you watch it?” Buttercup yelled, scooping some goop away from her eyes with both of her hands and throwing it. “That was awesome and all, but I’m trying to whoop ass over here.” She cocked her head to the side and then suddenly turned, throwing her fist and wailing on the face of a monster who had been coming up behind her. It fell to the ground, and she tackled it.

Brick laughed, wiping some gunk off his face as well. “Sorry,” he replied to her. Suddenly he turned, chasing after another nearby spike monster that had caught his eye, ready to do it all over again.

Before I had a chance to follow him and join in, my whole body was unexpectedly grabbed.

I was being wrapped up in something—and it took me a few prolonged seconds to realize it was a _creature_. Its body was long, muscular, snakelike—like a python’s, and ice cold. It tightened its crushing grip, squeezing me so hard that all of my joints creaked.

I cried out in astonishment and pain, and a face appeared directly in front of my face—white scales, long, needle-like fangs in multiple rows in its mouth, three pairs of black eyes, the three circle symbol on its forehead, and most unexpectedly, hands on the sides of its head, reaching down at me. The hands were white and bony but had skin so humanlike that I couldn’t stop myself from staring in terror.

As I struggled to get my own arms free from its tight hold around me, its face advanced down toward mine, peering at me eagerly, almost hungrily. Then, it actually _spoke_.

“ _Sssso preeetty,_ ” it said in a hissing, static whisper. “ _Preeetty girl, sssso preeeetty. I will eaaats the meaaats of your preeetty face, and it will tastes good, sssso veeery good.”_

It came close with its hands, tightly holding my face close to its own, and I screamed.

Suddenly its face and hands jerked away, then quickly unfurling from around me, its whole body flew back with gagging noises, and I was freed from its body’s tight grasp. I fell onto the dirty, sticky ground, black liquid and dried grass and dirt clinging to me in clumps, and I sat up, gasping in air deeply.

I looked around to see where the creature had gone, and it didn’t take long to find it—my boyfriend was standing with its neck between his hands, strangling it and rattling it around.

Then, with his bare hands, he tore the head from its body, yanked its hands off of the sides of its head, and turned his face, incinerating the squirming snake body with heat vision. It turned into black ash, and he threw the unmoving head onto the ground, stomping down on it with his foot several times, then hocked a wad of spit on it with a repulsed look on his face.

Brick then turned away from it, rushing over to help me off the ground. “Are you alright, babe? Anything broken?” He steadied me as I slipped on the slickness of the ground as I stood.

“No, I’m fine. Thanks to you,” I grimaced. Normally, it took a lot to truly shake me up, and that had left me feeling shaken. “It told me it was going to eat my face off.”

He made a face. “God. I’m sorry. I would’ve come sooner, but I was taking care of another Ball of Doom,” he laughed bleakly, then looked down at me. “Did it sneak up on you?”

“Yeah, it—” I stopped mid-sentence, something catching my attention as I glanced out at the chaotic scene. Across the way, Bubbles was being carried away by one of the flying creatures. Searching around for Boomer, I saw that his back was turned to her, preoccupied with beating a monster into the ground. I moved around Brick. “Oh God. Be right back!” I told him, tearing into the air after the winged thing. I heard Brick call after me, but I kept going.

Bubbles was screaming, trying to writhe free from its grasp on her, and the creature buzzed in response, lifting higher into the air as it struggled to carry her.

Without being seen, I flew up and hovered behind the winged creature, grabbing its first pair of kaleidoscopic dragonfly wings and yanking them off of its body. It yelped, beginning to turn to face me, and I latched onto its back so that it couldn’t. Wrapping my legs tight around its white, furry body, I ripped off the second pair of wings, throwing them out of the way.

“Bubbles, get ready to fly away! This thing is about to drop like a rock,” I shouted down to my sister.

Stopping her struggling for a moment, she turned her head towards the sound of my voice. Her short blonde hair was matted, much like mine was, with black muck. “Blossom?”

“Yes, it’s me.” I told her. “Get ready!”

“Okay!”

Tightening my hands around the last pair of wings, I tore them away, and immediately all three of us began to descend, plummeting back towards the Earth like an asteroid. Getting off of its back, I dodged its snapping jaws—it looked like a bird beak, but it had pointy teeth inside—and came around to the front of it to see Bubbles trying to claw her way out of its grasp.

Three pairs of white arms were wrapped around her— _human_ arms—and I began to help her break through all of them. The creature reached down with its beak and bit me on the hand, and I jerked it back, screamed, “Ow!” and punched it in the face.

Seeing the ground rushing up faster now, I yanked on all of the white arms hard, finally breaking their grip, and then I took my sister’s hand as we flew up and away just before the creature landed. As it crashed onto the ground, the creature let out one last loud static-y yelp, and it landed on a stray rock in the field—breaking its body in half and silencing it.

We hovered in the air, staring down at it. “Thanks for helping me,” Bubbles said, sighing in relief and turning to me. I could tell just by the look in her eyes that she was shaken, just as I had been minutes ago. “Boomer was distracted, and it just grabbed me out of nowhere.”

“It’s okay,” I told her, squeezing her hand in mine. “You’ve been going a great job otherwise.”

She smiled, appreciating the comment, then paused and looked around. “Where’s Brick? Wasn’t he with you?”

“He’s—” I squinted back to the area that I’d been before, only to see two of the four-legged creatures latching onto him—one with its fanged jaws with the both of its _two heads,_ fangs sunken into his torso, and the other with its hands, holding onto his feet so that he couldn’t fly away. “ _Shit!”_ I shouted, letting go of my sister’s hand and soaring back across the battle ground towards him.

On my way, another flying monster flew up beside me, buzzing and opening up its jaws. I did a sideways flip mid-flight, sending my foot clobbering into the back of its neck, and it crashed down onto the ground with a crunch. I aimed a particularly strong lightning bolt down at the creature, and it caught on fire, burning to a crisp as I flew away.

Arriving at the scene, I rushed up behind the four-legged monster that held Brick’s feet, latching my arms and legs around its long neck and holding its head between my hands. It began to wail in a human man’s voice, letting go of Brick’s feet and reaching back with its hands to try to pull me off of it. I twisted its head to the side in a rapid jerking motion, a crack resounded, and its scream got cut off as it dropped to the ground with me still on it.

I crawled out from underneath its weight, getting up and glowering down at it. Somehow, it still moved, its arms and legs flapping around, and with my foot, I brought it down hard in the middle of its torso, hearing its spine snapping in half. Its movement stopped, but I still heard the static noise coming from it.

Remembering how I’d seen Butch and Buttercup defeat these monsters, and realizing what I had to do, I reached down and grabbed it in my hands, holding it by its gaunt torso. Flexing and then tearing its body apart with my hands, black splurting all over me like water, I threw the top half of it one direction, and the other half in the opposite direction.

I immediately spun around, intending to help Brick with the other one, and instead watched as he ripped both of its heads in half—by pulling its gruesome smiles apart with his hands, unhinging the jaws and tearing both of the heads right down the middle. Even considering what I’d just done to the other monster, the sight was truly grisly. I had to look away for a moment, nearly retching.

Done with the heads, dropping them to the ground, Brick came at the body, tearing both arms off and chucking them far away. After watching them sail away, he turned to me, regarding me relatively calmly. “Well, thanks for coming back.”

I cringed at him guiltily. “Sorry, Bubbles needed help.” I came towards him, lifting his shirt to look at where he’d gotten bitten. I could tell the fangs had sunken deeply into his torso, but there were just little pink marks there now. “It bit you really hard.”

“I’m all right,” he said, though he was hunching over slightly. “Just stings a little.”

“This plan isn’t going so well anymore,” I remarked, looking out at our teammates.

Buttercup was taking on _three_ monsters on her own; two four-limbed monsters were swinging at her with their hands and snapping at her with their fangs as another—a snake-like one similar to the one that had attacked me—slithered around her. She took the two four legged ones by both of their heads and then smashed their faces together, both heads getting crushed and splurting Chemical X. Letting go of them and rubbing her hands together rapidly, she conjured then launched a green fire ball at the serpent monster, making it explode into a hundred fiery pieces.

Butch tied two snake creatures together, and then he sent them flinging through the air, barreling toward a spherical monster and impaling the creatures on its spikes. Behind him, another spiky monster launched its spikes, and they sunk into his side as he screamed.

Bubbles was throwing injured flying monsters under the feet of the twelve legged monster Boomer was fighting, effectively crushing them into the ground. As Boomer was soaring around the monster he fought, though, a four-legged monster caught his foot and snatched him from the sky, hurling him to the earth. He smashed into the ground, making a large crater around him and sending clumps of dirt flying.

Having watched the whole scene, enraged, Bubbles came careening at the four-legged creature head-on, head butting it with a battle cry and sending it sailing backward into a tree. The closest monster with twelve legs shot some web at her, wrapping all of her limbs up together and causing her to fall to the ground, helpless.

I turned back to Brick, seeing him watching them fight, too. “Look at them. This isn’t working. There’s just too damn many. They’re gaining on us.”

“There’s not as many left. We just need to keep going,” Brick said, but he looked unsure.

There was a sudden explosion of pain in my back. I cried out, turning to Brick and seeing him hissing through his teeth in pain and reaching for the spikes that now protruded out of his back. He ripped one out, grinding his teeth. After exchanging a look, we spun around to find another sphere monster behind us, grinning and snickering at the job it had done.

Completely in sync, we rose up into the air, turned around, and then came hurtling down at it, smashing downward together with both our fists and smushing it into a pile of goop, which once again landed all over us.

Landing back on my feet again, I looked down at the slime in disgust. “This is getting tedious,” I said. After scraping some more of the goopy mess off of my face, I reached back to yank all the spikes out from my flesh once again with a frustrated noise. “Really getting tired of _these_ in particul—”

Interrupting me without warning, Brick shouted, “Blossom, move!”

I lifted my gaze, looking around me, taken off guard. “What?”

Brick came at me, enfolding me in his arms and flying us both out of the way just in time—a twelve-legged monster came crashing down onto the ground in the exact place that I’d been standing. Its legs collapsed onto the dead grass like tree trunks coming crashing down. It made a thundering _boom_.

As soon as we were sure it was done falling, he let go of me as we stared back at it. “What the hell?” I said. The creature wasn’t making a sound. It wasn’t even moving. I left his side, standing up, and then came over to kneel next to it, listening closer. It wasn’t even buzzing. It was dead. “Who downed that one? I didn’t hear anyone pass us.”

Brick was searching the sky, looking for any one of our battle partners that might have passed us. “No one did,” he said. He’d gotten up too, and he came to stand next to me, looking down at the giant dead thing. “Maybe one of the other monsters did it.”

I was looking for any discernable injuries. There didn’t seem to be any. “It doesn’t look like it,” I said. I stared at it and frowned, getting the nagging feeling that something was wrong.

Brick threw his hands up. “Well, maybe it was sick, I don’t know. Who cares? Either way, it’s one less problem we have to deal with right now.” He began to turn away. “Come on, let’s just keep—”

There was another resounding _BOOM_ from across the field, making the earth beneath us rumble. We turned our heads to look in the direction it had come from—just in time to see _two_ more twelve legged monsters dropping to the ground at the same time, legs crushing down on other nearby monsters. Bubbles had been fighting one of them, it seemed, and now she was staring down at it in confusion.

Taking a quick sweep of the area with my eyes, I froze. Those two had been the last two monsters with twelve legs, there was no more left.

“What about those?” I asked, turning to Brick, my frown deepening. “Do you think those were sick, too?” He was frowning now, too, looking out at the other dead ones.

Our quiet moment of confusion didn’t last long. Directly in front of us, out of the blue, a flying monster crashed down at our feet. The both of us jumped back, startled. “God,” I said, gathering myself and gawking at it. Then, I kneeled down to look at it closely. It wasn’t moving or making noise, either. Lifeless.

“Blossom,” Brick said. “Look.”

I looked up. Six flying monsters were raining down to the ground, their wings ceasing to move and dead before they even hit the ground. I searched—that was all of the rest of the flying ones. All gone. I slowly started to stand back up, but then I saw a sphere monster from the corner of my eye. I turned to watch it. It was behaving strangely; its spikes were lurching up and down in strange patterns, vibrating, almost as if it were about to—

I grabbed Brick’s hand, yanking him onto the ground as I fell forward. Wordlessly, he let me pull him down, and the next second, there were several earsplitting detonations. The burst of spikes being launched, then a squicky sounding splat right under it. I counted five of them. Some spikes landed in the skin of my arms as I had covered up my head, and then there was the splash of slimy goop all over me.

Slowly, I lifted my head from between my arms, and Brick did the same. We were, once again, drenched in black muck. I looked to where the sphere monster had been sitting. It was gone, a pile of steaming jelly and slime and spikes in its place. It hadn’t launched the spikes—its entire body had _exploded_. I turned my gaze out to the rest of the battlefield, and all the rest of the sphere monsters had spontaneously combusted, as well. All five left were gone.

Our respective siblings had all stopped fighting, looking at all of the downed monsters, looking at each other and then looking over at us, perplexed and shocked. “What the fuck is going on?” I heard Buttercup exclaim.

I reached over to my side, grabbing Brick’s arm. He was completely frozen. “This can’t be,” I said to him, breathless. “Do you think…” I trailed off, never finishing my question.

Looking out, I saw all six of the snake-like monsters that were left slump to the ground, all thirty-six of their black eyes staring out unseeingly and glazed over.

And then, as all six of us watched it happen, the only creatures left, the ones with joker smiles and four legs, collided with the earth.

All five of them, at the exact same time. One landed right next to Brick and I, its head smacking hard against the ground. It twitched for a few seconds, then ceased all movement, its grinning, fanged mouth gone slack, hanging open. I watched Chemical X pour out of its throat, through its fangs and onto the dried grass below.

All of the shrieks, whispers, yelping and buzzing had stopped. The static noises were gone. Just complete silence.

Silence and fifty cold white monster corpses.


	8. Omen

**Chapter Seven**

**-Blossom’s POV-**

Quiet restlessness and disturbance filled the air in our childhood home that evening. The battle was over now, but somehow, it didn’t feel that way. All six of us sat in the living room, cleaning ourselves up with towels, watching and listening dazedly as Professor switched through each and every one of the major news stations on TV.

It was on every news station in the country.

“ _Where did this invasion come from? We interviewed eyewitnesses at the scene earlier today—”_ Switch.

On this channel, footage rolled of the chaotic battle scene, monsters flying and charging and us taking them down. I raised my eyebrows at particularly gory clip of Buttercup crushing the head of one of the four-legged creatures under her combat boot, black splurting all over her.

How had they even gotten footage of the fight? I hadn’t seen any camera crews around us. Not to mention it would’ve been too dangerous for them. Maybe they’d flown in some news helicopters and we’d been too busy to notice. “ _Rich, I never imagined something like this happening. I’m sure our viewers feel the same way. There’s fear, there’s uncertainty, there’s disbelief. And if something like this could happen in Townsville, it could happen anywhere.”_ Switch.

This time, there was misleading video of me and my battle companions getting taken down by different monsters, edited together to make it look like we’d lost the whole battle. They also threw in zoomed in, dramatic shots of our confused expressions when the creatures began to drop dead to the ground on their own.

“ _We saw how even the Powerpuff Girls and the Rowdyruff Boys were struggling during this fight today. Who’s to say this wouldn’t happen again? And if it does, will we be prepared for it? Are the Powerpuff Girls enough in this day and age? Maybe their protection isn’t enough anymore. Should cities like Townsville come up with military back up plans in case of an emergency that these superheroes can’t handle?”_ Professor abruptly switched the channel again.

Feeling my animosity and frustration swirling, I took a deep, slow breath to keep from having an outburst. I covered my mouth with my right hand. We hadn’t had the media so collectively against us since the Princess Morbucks incident of our sophomore year of high school. And even then, it hadn’t been this bad.

This was bad. This was _really_ bad.

Buttercup slammed her fist against the carpet, nostrils flared and rage in her eyes. She burst out, “We _were_ handling it. We were handling it just fine. Couldn’t they see that? Are they really that stupid?”

“Yeah, we were handling it. And then the remaining monsters died. And not because of us. They dropped dead for no reason.” Brick had his arms folded, staring ahead at the TV screen blankly. His voice was bleak. “Do you really blame them for thinking we couldn’t handle it when a little less than half of those things destroyed themselves instead of _us_ doing it like we were supposed to?”

Buttercup didn’t respond, just sunk down further onto the floor, the same angry, perplexed expression on her face that she’d worn ever since the abrupt end of our battle. It was same one the rest of us wore on our faces, too.

It had happened right in front of me hours ago, and yet I still couldn’t believe it had actually happened. Monster after monster, dropping straight to the ground like dominos. With no discernable cause. All of them, dead. 50 monster corpses lying in Townsville Park, white as snow, drenched in black goop.

Something about this felt so wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but there was something wrong. And with the way that the air was thick and unsettled around us all, I knew everyone else felt it too. I felt sick. I felt cold.

I needed answers. We all did. And soon.

Speaking to no one in particular, I said quietly, “No matter how many times I try and make sense of this, I can’t. None of it makes sense.” I turned to Brick, looking him in the eyes, searching for answers in the ruby depths as if they were written there. “Why would they show up in such huge numbers, fight us, and then the rest of them just…give up? Lie down and die right in front of our eyes? Completely unprovoked? Every single one?”

Brick stared back into my eyes with his haunted ones, seemingly searching for answers too. He only shook his head at me.

On the current news channel, they were having in-depth conversations and interviewing different people who had nothing to do with anything that had happened this afternoon. “ _We asked expert cryptozoologist Jim Lane to analyze this phenomena and give us his analysis for what might have happened. Here’s what he said.”_

A man with glasses appeared onscreen, answering an interviewer off screen. “ _I believe that since these creatures were made from Chemical X, something about the Chemical X in these superheroes caused the monsters to react to it, have an allergic reaction of sorts, which in turn caused them to self-destruct._ ”

“Bullshit,” Butch responded to the TV, scrubbing his shaggy hair with a white towel, blackening it with filth.

“Full of shit,” Boomer followed up. He was currently facing Bubbles, holding a wet washcloth and wiping leftover black goop off of her face as she despondently let him. Both of their blonde hair was still matted with black. We’d literally been cleaning ourselves up for hours, but we still reeked of the stuff.

Professor had kept complaining that we were leaving stains all over the white furniture and carpet, and he’d tried in vain to cover everything with plastic. He’d likely still be removing black stains from everything in the coming days. Likewise, I would probably be shampooing it out of my hair for the next two weeks.

“Watch the language, gentlemen. No cursing in my house, please.” Professor said, shooting Boomer and Butch a dark look from behind his glasses. They both quieted sullenly.

I turned, fully facing Professor, who was standing behind the couch. “They’re right, though. Clearly that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” I said, eyeing him. I continued matter-of-factly, “You do know, though. You caught on from the beginning, before anyone else did.”

Professor shook his head, making a noise of defeat. His short black hair—with grey sprinkled in it where there hadn’t been years before—was in disarray on his head, making him look like a mad scientist. “I didn’t _know_. It was just a conjecture that I had made.” He switched the channel again as the cryptozoologist prattled on about his terrible theory.

“Make another conjecture, then.” I said to him, patient. “Come on, Professor. What do you think is happening?”

Professor pressed his lips together for a moment, frustration still knitting his brow. “I don’t know for sure. Knowing they’re made from Chemical X isn’t enough. I don’t know exactly how these creatures were created, that’s the problem. I would have to analyze these monsters up close. Look at their composition, their DNA.”

I nodded slowly, having fully anticipated his answer. “I see,” I said. I reached carefully into the pocket of my shorts, pulling out the goop and piece of jelly flesh that I’d wrapped up in my pink handkerchief, now stained all over with black. I was surprised that it hadn’t squelched out of the handkerchief during all of the action. “Then it’s a good thing I saved this.” I got up from the couch, handing it to Professor.

He took it, then unwrapped it. As soon as he realized what it was, he gasped, his eyebrows raising high up on his head. “Blossom,” he looked up at me gratefully, eyes sparkling, putting a loving hand on my cheek. “My brilliant little girl.” I smiled up at him.

“What is that?” Bubbles asked, peering over at us, just like everyone else was.

“A sample of flesh I took from one of the creatures I defeated. I thought it might come in handy.” I shrugged like it was nothing as the others reacted with shock and awe. Not going to lie, I was feeling a little proud of myself. “I’m just glad it wasn’t for nothing.”

“Good going, Bloss,” said Boomer, smiling at me. Butch gave me a thumbs up.

“Baby, you’re a genius.” Brick said, standing up from the couch and looking at me proudly. He looked at my dad. “So you’ll be able to analyze this, right?”

Professor nodded, staring down at the strange white flesh, which was still coated in black liquid. “Yes, I will. But I’ll have to start preserving it right now, while it’s still fresh.” He looked at me again, his eyes soft. “Thank you, Blossom. Because of you, we might finally have some answers soon.”

“Nice going, Pinky,” Buttercup said, finally speaking up again and looking much less unsatisfied. Everyone did, in fact. I was happy to be able to provide at least the one source of relief for the evening.

Excusing himself, Professor then disappeared down to his basement laboratory, locking the door behind him.

We stayed in the living room, flipping between news programs on TV and continuing to complain and groan at all of their sensationalizing and inaccuracy. Additionally, a few times, there were reporters ringing our doorbell, demanding to talk to Professor, and we shooed them all away. Eventually we stopped opening up the door and kept the curtains on all the windows shut, and the reporters pounded on the door ceaselessly. The sound of the doorbell rang into late at night.

And Professor stayed down in his laboratory for the rest of the evening.

Taking advantage of being able to use our own shower instead of the usual communal showers at school, I took a long hot shower, scrubbing and scrubbing at my lengthy hair foot by foot, using an entire third of the shampoo bottle, watching black water and dirt swirl down the drain.

Eventually I got out of the shower, letting Bubbles and Buttercup use it next as my hair air dried. After the both of them were finished, the boys left, kissing and hugging us goodbye.

Hours went by, and it was late. Later than we should have stayed at home on a school night. It was time for us to go back to our campus, since we would all have school the next day. Before we left, we shouted our goodbyes to Professor through the basement door.

He didn’t answer. Only an eerie silence followed.


	9. Anarchy

**Chapter Eight**

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

School the next day was…well. It was more intolerable than its’ usual, normal amount of intolerableness.

That truly terrible Monday, probably the shittiest Monday in all of existence, started with everyone on the freaking campus staring at me as I walked to my first class of the day. Usually, my sisters and I got a little more attention from the people we went to school with, because of who we were and all that. But today, it was more than just that. It was like living our sophomore and junior years of high school all over again.

Judging stares. Whispers. Pointing. Smirking.

Only this time, it wasn’t Princess Morbucks’s fault because of some dinky little rumor she’d spread. Or the fault of emotional turmoil caused by the Rowdyruff boys back when we weren’t together yet and they had gone through with their really stupid plan to keep us away. Oh no. It was none of those things this time.

This time, it was the media, Internet, and entire general public turning against us. All because of one stupid battle. All because of some stupid, self-destructing monsters that had made complete fools of us.

And _in_ my first class of the day, I was treated to the ignoramuses in my class hounding me.

As soon as I sat in my usual seat—a chair at an empty table in the very back corner of the room, furthest from the professor—three dudes sitting nearby stared at me, whispering and laughing and pointing. I tried so hard to ignore it, folding my arms and staring ahead with a look that I hoped said ‘do not even attempt talking to me or you will incur my wrath’.

Eventually, though, and predictably, they got out of their seats, coming over to me. “Hey,” one of them said. “You’re one of the Powerpuff girls, right? Buttercup?”

I flexed my jaw, contemplating for a second if I should humor them or not. I sighed, knowing I was going to seriously regret this. “Yes,” I finally said flatly.

They traded nudges. “I told you she was in our class!” One of them said to the other two.

The third one turned to me. “Why do you and your sisters suck now?”

The other two chorused in laughs and ‘ooh’s. Some of our other classmates were watching us now with interest, obviously sensing that a conflict would happen soon. His words lit up a match inside of my chest, and I stiffened. With my eyes narrowed at the smartass third one who had dared to say that to me, I felt my face fall into a grimace. “What was that?”

The third guy looking less bold, probably because of the look on my face, he shrugged. “I mean, yeah. Obviously you guys were better at this superhero thing when you were little kids. Maybe you’re getting too old for it, or something. Maybe you should retire.”

Keeping my eyes trained on this asshole, I stood from my seat slowly, unfolding my arms and leaning over my table towards him threateningly. “You wanna say that again?”

He took a step back, defensive. “Hey, I’m not the only one who thinks it! The whole Internet is saying that about you guys. Your whole performance the other day was lousy.”

“ _Performance?_ ” I slammed my hands down on the table top. The wood splintered underneath my palms. “Did you think all that shit was for your entertainment? We were saving all of your asses. Would you like my job? Let me see you do any better with that jelly gut of yours, then.”

The three of them were looking down at my desk with visible alarm. “H-hey, you’d better not break that,” one stuttered nervously. “That’s destruction of school property.”

“Then maybe you and your little pals here better not piss me off,” I said through my teeth. I was still staring them down, letting go of my cool exterior fully and letting my fury show. “Here’s some advice. Turn around, go back to your desks, and never utter one syllable to me ever again.”

“She’s scary,” one of them murmured to another. My eyes jolted sharply to him, and he dropped his gaze from me, looking at the floor and backing up a step.

Another one of our classmates, a girl sitting about seven feet away, stood up from her seat. “Hey,” she barked at me.

I turned my glower to her, looking her up and down. She was small, even smaller than me, and I never heard her speak except for when she was correctly answering questions the professor asked. “What?” I said flatly.

Looking slightly uncomfortable now that I was looking at her, she cleared her throat but looked at me head on. “Aren’t you supposed to be a super hero? Shouldn’t you be making sure you’re doing your job right instead of threatening your own classmates?”

I stiffened up again coldly. The room chorused in agreements then, people agreeing with her and turning distrusting, accusatory gazes my way. The shift in the dynamic of the room was instant.

“Yeah. Do you think you’re better than us, or something?” Another girl, a blonde one who was always popping gum, said.

Another guy chimed in, “Just because you have super powers, that doesn’t mean you can just push us around!”

Someone else said, “Being on TV all the time doesn’t make you special. You’re not all that.”

“You, your sisters and those Rowdyruff brothers are just a bunch of fakes. Anyone could do what you do.”

The different voices began talking over each other, blending into each other, getting louder and louder until everyone was just shouting in my direction, accusation after accusation after insult from each angry face. I had sat back down into my seat, gripping the edge of my table hard, watching my own knuckles turn white as more cracks formed in the wood of my desk. My whole face was flushed in my rage. Keeping my mouth clamped shut, I had begun to sweat, restraining and pushing down all of the violent defense mechanisms I was thinking of, not wanting to prove them right. Anything I did would just egg them on, and I knew that. But it was building and building inside of me. It had been years since I’d last erupted.

The moment I felt like I couldn’t take anymore, and I was seriously considering turning to the window beside me and flying away out of it, from the front of the classroom, there was a loud _BANG_.

“All of you, _quiet!_ ” The professor of our College Algebra class had arrived and none of us had noticed. She’d thrown her books onto her desk, and it had startled everyone silent. Her voice rang louder than any of theirs had. “I cannot believe my ears. I will _not_ tolerate this sort of animal-like behavior in my classroom, _especially_ toward one of my students. If I hear one more unnecessary or inappropriate comment toward Ms. Utonium out of any of you, I will throw you out, and you will lose all of your participation points for this week. Am I clear?”

Everyone sat back in their seats, no one said a word of dissent, and I let out a quiet breath of relief. I didn’t think I’d ever liked a teacher so much before that moment, but I also didn’t think any of my teachers had ever stood up for me before, either.

The lesson started, and no one even glanced over at me. Slowly, I let go of my desk, and the tension left my back and shoulders as most of the anger melted away.

As soon as our professor dismissed the class, I got out of there as fast as I could.

* * *

 

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

“Bubbles! Is it true that you and your sisters have given up crime fighting for good?”

“Is there any truth to the Internet rumor that you’ve sworn off a life of fighting monsters and have decided to move into the mountains and live without modern technology?”

“Bubbles! Bubbles! Any word on your recent loss in battle?”

All I did was leave my English Composition class and exit the building, and a swarm of reporters met me on the other side of the doors, surrounding me and shoving their microphones into my face. Their cameramen were right behind them, shoving each other around to get the best shot of me, or perhaps the most incriminating one.

I ducked my head down, my hair falling free from behind my ears and shielding some of my face from the cameras. “Excuse me, pardon me,” I said to them, trying to make my way through the crowd. Some of the reporters were polite, letting me pass by, and others blocked my path. I could feel my face flushing with frustration and slight nervousness and I continued, “I can’t answer these questions right now, I’m sorry. I really need to get to my next class now. Please let me through. Please. I’m gonna be late.”

“So you don’t plan on answering any questions? The public needs answers! Why are you and your sisters evading the media? What do you have to hide?”

“Bubbles! Are you hiding something?”

“Is Professor Utonium avoiding questions for a reason? Is he behind yesterday’s monster attack on the city?”

I couldn’t believe these questions. They were getting worse and worse. I pleaded, growing more frustrated, “Please, just let me through!” Tears pricked the backs of my eyes.

The questions grew louder, more frantic, the pushes getting more intense. I found myself in the middle of a rabid mob, and what was worse was the people I went to school with, just standing by and watching the situation unfold with a distant and amused interest. I eyed some of them, hoping they’d see that I needed help for once, but they didn’t even budge—a few of them even rolled their eyes, seemingly annoyed. None of them were even going to try to help me.

Closing my eyes, I lifted into the air, breaking the dean’s rule once again as I flew off into the sky, the questions echoing after me on the ground that I had left.

Speeding through the air to my sister’s familiar dorm building, I landed directly in front of the door and burst through it, rushing to the stairs and full-on sprinting up all of them until I reached the sixth floor. Heading straight to the door of their dorm, I didn’t even pause to knock, just took out the spare key that Blossom had copied for me and let myself in, swinging the door open.

As soon as I entered, I was greeted by the sight of Blossom snapping her eyes up to the door, surprised to see me. “Bubbles,” she said. “Hey. Are you okay?”

I swung the door shut behind me, locking it again, and then turned to her, letting the tears come out of my eyes now. “No.” I felt my lower lip tremble.

Sympathy melted over my sister’s face. “The reporters found you too, huh?” She scooted over on her bed spread, patting the space next to her.

Not even bothering to walk, I floated over to her bed and dropped down next to her, curling my knees into my chest, wrapping my arms around them and leaning against her shoulder. “They’re crazy, Blossom. They were eating me alive out there.”

My sister’s arm curled around my shoulders, hugging me to her. “I know. They have no shame at all. I’ve managed to avoid the reporters for the most part, but my classmates haven’t been much better.” I looked up at her just in time to see her cringe.

“Your classmates? Really?” I stared at her, alarmed. “Nobody said a word to me in any of my classes so far.” Then I paused, remembering the indifference I had faced from my campus mates just minutes ago. “Although, I noticed that no one else was really eager to back me up, either.” I frowned.

Blossom sighed. “Yeah, that too. But you’re lucky you haven’t been hounded in class,” she said. “With the way they were grilling me, you would think I took classes with a bunch of interns at the Townsville Times.”

This time I cringed. “I’m sorry, Bloss.” I sighed, too. “Today sucks.”

“Yup,” she said. We were silent for a minute or two, sulking. The past two days had been a disaster.

I broke the brief quiet. “When will this die down?” I asked her. “It has to eventually, right? I can’t spend the rest of the semester scared of leaving my dorm because of reporters. This is madness.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry. They’ll get over it soon. They always do. They’ll find something more juicy and important to report on, and they’ll forget all about us. We’ll be just the boring superheroes again soon enough.”

Sighing once more, and nodding, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and checked the time on the screen. “Well, it’s my lunch break. I don’t want to go back out there, though, so I guess I’ll just starve until dinner.”

Blossom chuckled, lightening up the morose atmosphere of the room a little. “Oh, come on. Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll order delivery.” She took out her laptop. “What do you want? Korean food? Pizza? That Mexican restaurant delivers now, too.”

I knew coming here had been the right choice. I had only been here a few minutes, and most of the stress had left my body. The thought of ordering out put a big smile on my face. I said, “They all sound good, but we should call Buttercup first. You know she’ll be mad at us if we order food without asking her if she wants anything.” Blossom laughed.

After ordering our food, and Buttercup joined us and vented about her awful first class of the day, we ate our delivery, enjoying the last relaxed minutes we had before going out into the hurricane of questions once more.

* * *

 

**-Brick’s POV-**

I sighed. I checked my watch. Half of the class was left still, and half had been completely wasted. I sighed again, letting my wrist fall back down onto the desk top. I dragged a hand down my face slowly. This had been the longest day in history.

It had been enough that I was still trying to make sense of what had happened yesterday. I’d thought the previous night had been the worst. But as it turned out, I was wrong. This day of classes was currently the worst in my recent memory.

I was in the midst of watching an ongoing, heated debate between my classmates.

Despite being in an economics class, the debate itself wasn’t about economics at all, or even about today’s topic of discussion written on the whiteboard at the front of the class.

The debate was about me. Me, my brothers, my girlfriend, and her sisters.

Today had been a whirlwind of criticisms and accusations and rude questions being barraged at me from left and right, and by now, I had stopped feeling upset by it. Now it was just plain boring and irritating. Even my professor had stopped trying to teach the class today’s lesson; instead she had pulled up a chair to observe animatedly and throw in some comments here and there.

She definitely encouraged a debate-club like atmosphere in her classroom at all times, and getting us to debate in any way about anything was exciting for her, even if it wasn’t about the lesson. And I guess even if it was at my expense.

“Townsville would clearly be better off with an organized military system in place, like other large cities in this country,” said one girl who usually sat near the front of the classroom and corrected anyone who ever answered a question wrong. “We’re the only large city left in the country with this superhero system, along with our awful police force, and look what it’s left us with. Some ex-child-star-like college students with super powers who are clearly past their prime.”

My mouth twitched. Couldn’t say I hadn’t been expecting to hear that. Ouch, though. I coolly fidgeted with my pen, which I’d taken out of my backpack at the beginning of class to take notes but was now completely useless.

A dude who usually sat in the back and would barely participate in class discussions piped in, “Listen, the media has portrayed it all wrong. They’re completely censoring and twisting what really happened. Read eyewitness’s accounts online about how it actually went down.”

‘Yes,’ I thought. ‘Finally, someone who knows what they’re saying.’ A slight grin appeared on my face, I began to nod, and I took a breath to agree with him, relieved to finally hear some sense come from one of my classmates.

Another girl talked before I could. “You know those accounts are hoaxes, right? Completely fabricated. Anybody could write one of those and say it was the truth. There’s never any proof.”

“No, there were pictures that they took from the scene on their cellphone.” The guy from before insisted. “You can see Blossom and Bubbles flying around in them, and they aren’t doctored. It’s legit!”

She looked at him skeptically. “Did all of the accounts have pictures or video with them?”

He stopped, hesitantly conceding. “Well, no, but—”

“So those ones could’ve easily been fake. None of us really know what actually happened there,” she concluded, looking out at the rest of the class as they nodded at her in agreement. The guy she’d been arguing with sat back down, defeated. I blinked at him dryly, tight lipped, disappointed at him giving up so easily.

Adjusting my red beanie on my head in tired frustration, I lifted a finger into the air before anyone else could say anything. “Uh, I was there,” I pointed out. “I could tell all of you exactly what happened.”

Everyone turned their gazes to me, startled looks on their faces as if just remembering that I was even in that class.

Another girl, one I’d never talked to before, said, “But wait. If you do tell us what happened, how would we know whether you’re lying or not? You _did_ used to be a supervillain when you were a kid. Don’t think we forgot all about that.” The class loudly chorused in agreement, turning cold glares and sneers at me.

Giving up, I leaned back in my seat, calmly folding my hands. “Fair enough,” I said tiredly. I waved a hand in the air. “Continue with your discussion about me, then.”

I’d meant it facetiously, but that was exactly what they did. They launched back into debate mode full force.

“What about the past two years, though? Besides the past week or so, crime here has almost been down to nothing. They even got rid of Mojo Jojo!” Someone plugged in for our benefit, which I appreciated.

“Who gives a crap about that? As if Mojo was that big of a deal to begin with. He was a lousy villain. Another monkey could’ve gotten rid of him,” someone else said. My eyebrows shot up. “Besides, having no crime doesn’t matter that much if we’re going to have monster armies attack the city every month, and they couldn’t even handle that. The _one_ big crime-fighting job they’ve had in years and they made fools of themselves.”

I scoffed. Well, shit. That was bold. “Real nice,” I said under my breath.

The same smart guy from before stood up once again and shouted, “They did _not!_ Watch footage online, seriously. They were kicking ass. They got rid of most of those monsters themselves. They were doing their jobs quite well. And the rest of those monsters died from seemingly natural causes, or maybe from fright, that’s all. The media has turned against them for some reason, that’s the only reason they’re making them out to be failures.”

Another point for smart dude. I nodded approvingly, clapping. “This guy knows what he’s talking about,” I said to no one in particular.

A girl standing near me turned to glare at me. “Shut up, no one asked you.”

I stopped clapping, frowning, then I folded my arms. “Unnecessary,” I muttered, looking away.

One more guy responded to the smart guy’s rebuttal, “Ugh, ‘the media’, ‘the media’, ‘the media’. Is that all you can talk about? You think there’s some conspiracy going on here, but guess what? Sometimes the evil media that you hate so much is right about things. And they’re right about this. These superheroes suck.”

“Don’t hold back,” I said, loud enough for the whole class to hear.

I received a nasty chorus of ‘shut up’s, ‘be quiet’s, and just plain shushing. I pressed my lips together, shutting up. For the rest of class I just listened silently to their spirited yammerings, bored and annoyed and exasperated.

* * *

 

**-Boomer’s POV-**

As soon as Butch and I had left our dorm building, we were surrounded by a ravenous mob. Of reporters. Once again.

“Rowdyruff Boys! Rowdyruff Boys!”

“Hey, Butch! Over here!”

“Boomer! We have some questions!”

Rowdy reporters, shoving each other to get to us and shoving cameras and microphones in our faces. I had run into them once this morning, but I hadn’t thought I would have to deal with them again. This whole situation was beginning to get ridiculous.

“For the love of God,” Butch complained. He looked over at me, scowling in disbelief. “I can’t escape these roaches.”

“Neither can I,” I said, sighing.

Turning toward them again, Butch began shoving his way through. “Move it, you swines,” he demanded. He crudely pushed reporters left and right, plowing a path that I followed him through with apprehension, keeping my hands to myself.

Reporters at his side still tried to keep up with him. A man reporter pushed his microphone into his face. “Butch, how long do you plan on not explaining to the public what happened on Sunday?”

Butch pushed his hand over the mic and shoved it away. “That’s not my job, get the hell out of my face.”

Another one shouted, getting defensive, “Butch, why don’t you just answer our questions? Then we’ll leave you alone.”

“Why don’t you just go away instead?” he responded, grumbling. He turned quickly to the right, probably hoping to throw them off and break through an opening. It was unsuccessful. Two cameramen blocked his path.

“Brick, when did you dye your hair?” One confused reporter asked.

He let out an impatient growl. “I’m not Brick. I’m Butch. I’m warning you, move out of my way.” His eyes were dangerous and he was beginning to shout, which told me he wasn’t far away from exploding. This wouldn’t be good.

“Butch…” I said quietly in warning, hoping to calm him down.

One last reporter interrupted me. “Butch, what will you and your brothers do after the recent failed—”

“ _ALL OF YOU GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE_ ,” Butch bellowed, and the flow of questions immediately stopped, turning into total, terrified silence. Pushing past the last of the reporters, Butch took off into the air, flying away with such a thunderous force that it caused the reporters nearest him to go tumbling to the ground.

I rushed over to help up one of the female reporters that had fallen on the ground, gently pulling her up after offering her a hand. “I’m so sorry,” I apologized, pausing to help a man up as well. “I’m sorry. He’s in a bad mood today. He didn’t mean to knock you over. It was just an accident.” I knew he _had_ meant to knock them over so he could escape, but explaining my brother’s crude tendencies to them wouldn’t have helped, so I apologized again instead. I picked up a cameraman’s camera that had fallen onto the ground as well, brushing some dirt off of the lens and then handing it to him. “Sorry.”

“Thank you,” said the lady reporter I had helped up. She continued, smiling up at me hopefully, “Boomer, will you please answer some questions for us? It’ll only take a few moments.”

I shook my head at her regretfully. “Sorry, I can’t answer any questions right now. I have my next class to get to, and I have to leave now, or I’ll be late. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go.” I smiled at them politely. “Also, if you could please stop disrupting the school day for our classmates just because of us, that would be great.”

The reporters collectively got disappointed looks on all their faces, traded looks with each other, then looked at me again. I offered them another slight smile and began to walk away.

After I’d walked a few feet, from over my shoulder, I suddenly heard, “Boomer, why can’t you answer any questions? Are you, your brothers, and the Powerpuff girls hiding something from the public?”

Startled, I glanced behind me, and when I did I realized that the small crowd of reporters were _following me to class_. Their cameras and mics were stretched out to me once again.

“Boomer, do you know where your brother Brick is? Will he answer any of our questions?”

“Why did your brother Butch respond so violently?”

“Do you think that all of you might retire from crime fighting within the year?”

Sighing miserably, dejected, I turned back around, letting them follow me like a pod of annoying, loud ducklings as I made my way through the campus to my sculpting class.

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

A whole two days of classes passed, and things seemed to calm down slightly.

Reporters had finally stopped stalking us everywhere we went. It seemed that after getting no answers, they had finally given up. Also, campus security had been alerted of them, and they were all banned from entering our schools now. Perhaps now they could go back to interviewing their psychologists and cryptozoologists to milk for some extra ratings.

On early Tuesday evening, no one hounded me as I sat in the school library, reading a book. I was done with all of my homework currently, and some teachers hadn’t even assigned us homework. It had been the last day I’d had class for the week. Thanksgiving break started for the whole campus tomorrow, and my sisters and I were going to stay home for a few days over the holiday break.

Professor had been busy at work in his laboratory since Sunday night. He hadn’t answered any of our calls, or emails, or texts—though he wasn’t very good at texting to begin with. The texts had been a last resort, really, but we hadn’t known what else to do. He never took this long to get back to us when we tried to contact him. Ever.

We knew he was busy though, so we tried not to pester him too much. Whatever breakthrough he was working on in that laboratory of his, it would be important. It would offer us the answers we needed. The answers the whole world wanted.

That night, my sisters and I flew back to our childhood home.

We settled into the quiet house, and Professor came up from the basement once, greeting us with rushed hugs and a dinner he’d popped into the oven, and then he disappeared down into the lab again.

I went to sleep that night in my old bedroom after spending some time staring at the ceiling, concentrating and listening very closely to hear movements in the basement. It was far away, but when I held my breath, I heard him moving, scribbling notes on paper, moving some more. Some exasperated sighs here and there.

I rolled over in my old bed and closed my eyes, comfortable but also somehow not that comfortable at all.

 

 


	10. Blind Eye

**Chapter Nine**

**-Blossom’s POV-**

“Buttercup! Would you get off of your lazy ass and help us with this?” I shouted through the kitchen archway in the direction of my green eyed sister.

Buttercup was sitting in the living room. I didn’t even have to look again to know that she was still lounging lazily with one leg over the back of the couch and watching the annual Thanksgiving parade on TV as she played with her phone.

She responded, “Do you _want_ a burnt Thanksgiving dinner? Do you _want_ the entire kitchen to get destroyed in my clumsy, sad attempts to help you and Bubbles cook?” She paused, listening for any kind of response from me. Then she said, satisfied, “Didn’t think so.”

I huffed, putting the rolls into the oven, the heat from inside of it washing over my face. It was the last thing that needed to be cooked; the turkey was already done to perfection, along with the stuffing, cranberry sauce, and vegetables. Closing the oven door, I stood up again. “You could at least set the dining room table,” I called out to her flatly.

I heard her snort. “Yeah, Pinky. I’ll get right on that,” she said.

I exchanged a tired look with Bubbles, and she shrugged her shoulders, rolling her eyes.

It was Thanksgiving Day, and instead of all of us preparing the dinner with Professor like we did every year, it was just Bubbles and I cooking this year. Professor had come upstairs that morning, having spent the entire night in the lab—it didn’t even seem like he had slept at all. He’d apologized, saying he didn’t know if he could help us cook this year, but he promised that he would be back up to have dinner with us. He disappeared back downstairs after that, locking himself in.

It was perfectly understandable, and it’s not that Bubbles and I really minded that much, it was just a ton of work. Work that would have been alleviated by our third sister helping us out, no doubt, but we’d already gotten most of the meal done already anyway.

“I’m so tired,” I said to Bubbles, leaning up against the counter.

She hopped up and levitated onto the counter, sitting on the edge of it with her legs hanging down. She really did look tired too. She looked naturally pretty, as she always did in the mornings with no makeup on. But her tiredness showed in her heavily eyelids and in the way her short hair had begun to fall out of the tiny ponytail she’d put it in earlier, sticking out in disarray around her head. “Same here. I’m almost too tired to eat,” she joked. She reached down to brush off some flour she’d spilled on her pajama pants. After a sigh, she looked over at me. “Are the boys still coming for dinner?”

I nodded. “They are, Brick told me they’d be here around three.” I checked my phone. Almost 12. We’d been cooking and baking nonstop since early morning. I stretched my arms, feeling some tension in them release, and said, “Next Thanksgiving, I vote we order Chinese takeout instead. Zero stress.” Bubbles giggled in agreement.

We wandered into the living room for a little while, watching the end of the parade with Buttercup, then after it was over, we dragged her off the couch to make her help us decorate the table. The rolls finished baking, and we took them out of the oven and put them next to all of the other finished dishes, putting them in a bowl and spreading aluminum foil over the top of it like we’d done with the other food.

By the time that was done, we only had an hour and a half left to make ourselves look presentable, so all three of us flew up to our old bedrooms to get ready. After some hard work, my hair was pretty and wavy, my makeup was done, and my favorite hot pink sweater dress looked great with my whole ensemble. Bubbles’ light blue turtleneck and miniskirt looked cute and comfortable, and I appreciated Buttercup’s attempt at dressing up with her oversize dark green sweater and skinny black pants.

The house was quiet as we made final preparations, and shortly after three, the doorbell rang.

Bubbles went to answer it, greeting who was on the other side cheerfully, and in came all three of our boyfriends from the cold air outside. The three of them were dressed for the weather, in hats and scarves and coats, looking like three male models from a winter photospread in a magazine.

Brick, in particular, was wearing a black knit hat with flaps, his red hair sticking out from underneath it in that way that makes guys look so attractive effortlessly, and with it he wore his long, burgundy red coat, the one I’d bought for him last winter as a present. It made butterflies rise up in my stomach, the way I always felt when he wore what I bought for him. I walked over to hug him, and he pulled me into his bundled up arms.

“Missed you,” I whispered into his black scarf.

He leaned down slightly. “Missed you, too.” He whispered back, kissing the top of my head. As he shifted, I caught the scent of his cologne, and the butterflies stirred again. As we hugged, Bubbles and Boomer hugged and kissed sweetly while Butch tackled Buttercup on the couch, making her laugh and playfully shove him. After a few more moments, Brick pulled away from our hug, glancing around. “Hey, where’s Professor?”

A simultaneous sigh came from my sisters and I at the same time. “Same place he’s been for all of this week,” Buttercup muttered.

“The lab,” Bubbles said tiredly. She took Boomer’s coat, then made her way over to take Butch’s coat. “He rarely even comes back up for air.” She came over to Brick just as he was shrugging off his coat, and he handed it to her. She went to the front closet to hang them all up.

I shot my sisters a scolding look. “You guys, come on. Don’t be that way. He’s been working really hard on this research. It’s really important not just for him, but for all of us, too. Give him a break.”

Buttercup still looked bothered, but she conceded, saying, “He could at least come up here and get a plate of food.”

I nodded. She was right, it was about time to eat anyway. “Well then, let’s see if he’s ready.” I walked over to the basement door, knocking hard. “Professor! Are you ready to eat?” I listened hard. No response. I knocked again. “Professor, the boys are here, we’re all hungry. Come upstairs!” Even though I easily could hear through the door without even straining to, I pressed my ear up against it. I heard him moving around, but there was still no response. I turned, looking at the others with a perplexed expression. “He’s not answering,” I said.

Buttercup stomped over, shoving me out of the way. “Just let me do it, maybe he can’t hear you. You know how humans can be.” She pounded on the door with her fist hard, so hard that I was afraid it might come off of its hinges. She yelled, “Professor! Hey! We haven’t eaten all day, we’re starving up here! Are you gonna join us, or what?” She pounded on the door again, even harder, causing the entire doorway to shake.

I stopped her hand with mine, wincing. “Easy, Buttercup. You’re gonna break the door.”

We listened. We could hear his feet pacing around as if he was nervous, but still no answer. Buttercup dropped her hand out of mine, giving me a look of disbelief. “What is with him? Why isn’t he answering us?”

There was a long pause. Then I broke the silence. “Let’s wait a little longer. Maybe he just has to get something important done first.” I stopped, paced out of the kitchen and walked over to where in the living room we had pulled out board and card games earlier, just in case we’d wanted to play them later. Now seemed as good of a time as ever. I picked up the first box I saw, turning to the rest of them. “We could play Life Race while we wait.”

After a moment of consideration from the rest of them, we sat on the floor in a circle and set up the board game in the middle of all of us.

We did the usual preparations—choosing which car we wanted, which order we would take turns in, passing out stacks of multicolored faux money—and then the game started.

I took the lead in the beginning, which was convenient, considering I was the one to start each round of turns. Boomer was right at my heels, though, and Buttercup right after that. Brick was dead last, which visibly infuriated him more than a board game probably should.

Bubbles moved her light blue car—which had one lone pink person figure in it—up five more spaces, coming up right behind Buttercup’s light green car. She read the space she had landed on out loud. “’You fall in love. Add one significant other to your car.’” She smirked and looked sideways at Boomer, who was grinning at her widely. “I wonder what his name is?” She teased.

“Let’s hope to God it’s not Steven,” Buttercup cut in, not missing a beat.

Something—maybe the dull, faded, remainder of the memory of my brief, first real boyfriend in high school—sank faintly inside of me. As everyone besides Brick laughed, though, I shook my head and grinned good naturedly. “Not funny, Buttercup.” It had been years, but our ill-fated breakup still stung me a little if the memory twisted a certain way. But she shrugged, still laughing.

Boomer started his turn, spinning the wheel and landing on a 3. I gasped as he lapsed my lead by two spaces. “Hah!” He said at me, grinning. Then he leaned forward to read the space he’d landed on. “’You are fired from your job. Go back 3 spaces and withdraw a new career from the career deck.’” His face soured as he put his car back exactly where it had been, and we laughed at him this time. He picked up a new card from the stack of career cards—now he was a mechanic.

“No fair,” Butch protested. “I should’ve gotten that one.”

Buttercup went next, ending up in the exact space I had my car in, the ‘ _1 Lifepoint’_ space. Then Butch went, landing on the ‘ _You get a pay raise! Take 50,000 dollars._ ’ spot and moving right behind Boomer’s car. Then it was my turn again. I spun the wheel, landed on a 6—“Nice!” I’d said—and triumphantly moved my car forward on the colorful road.

I leaned forward to read the space I’d landed on. Before I read it out loud, my eyes scanned over it quickly. ‘ _Surprise pregnancy! Add 1 child to your car_.’ Completely unable to help my response, my face blanched.

Everyone was staring at me, none the wiser and waiting for me to read it aloud. “Well? What’d you get?” Bubbles prodded.

I swallowed hard, trying to push down my immediate unease and forcing a smile. “Uh, surprise pregnancy,” I said, then I cleared my throat and reached for the tiny bag of people to add a ‘child’ to my car.

Everyone had chorused in ‘ooh’s.

“Oooh. Teen mom,” Buttercup teased. “Blossom, I really thought you’d be a little more careful than that.”

Butch laughed and joined in, joking, “Way to forget about the condom, Brick, you screw up.”

My face was still drained, and I risked a glance over at Brick to see him beet red, though he was laughing. He took his shoe off, acting like he was going to throw it at his brother. “Shut up, dumbass.” He said.

I put the little pink peg person inside of my car, staring down at it for a moment before looking away, watching as Butch and Brick continued to throw empty jabs at each other, making everyone else laugh. I hoped no one noticed my silence, or the strained smile on my face. That way I wouldn’t have to bring up why that little space had bothered me so much. The word ‘sterile’ rung in my head over and over again like a phone that no one would pick up.

I cleared my throat, turning to Brick and saying in a voice that I hoped sounded casual, “Your turn, Brick.”

The subject passed quickly, and I was relieved. He spun the wheel in the middle of the board and landed on a whopping 10. Since he had been struggling up until now to get a decent number, we all applauded him as he pretended to bow with a little flourish of his hand. “Thank you, thank you,” he said. He moved his car up, bypassing all of our little cars with a giant satisfied smirk on his face. He stopped one space behind my car. “Uh oh, Bloss. I’m coming to take your number one spot.”

Feeling a little more relaxed again after the earlier tense moment, I smiled at him and rolled my eyes. “Only in your wildest dreams.”

He winked, then he leaned down to read the space. “’Sudden unforeseen medical emergency. Withdraw $10,000 dollars from your account for your hospital stay.’ Oh, come on. What kind of crap is that?” He groaned, turning to his pile of fake money.

“Mmhmm,” Boomer said, nodding in faux sympathy. “Sucks for you, dude.”

“Not feeling so smug now, are we?” I asked.

Bubbles joined in too, obviously holding back her giggles, “Have a fast recovery.”

Brick rolled his eyes, dryly slapping down his fake ten grand onto the board.

The game continued on, with debts created, more children gained, marriages had, houses bought, vacations spent, lotteries won, and retirement plans put into place. And during this interesting game of make believe life, I couldn’t help thinking that it was maybe a little cruel.

Of course, it was just a stupid, entertaining game. Fake ‘pregnancies’ aside, there were plenty of these other things that I wondered how many people actually got to experience in real life. Of course there were the negatives that rarely anyone could escape from being affected by—the money problems, the medical problems, the tragedies—but what of the things that were deemed a requirement to have a worthy life?

What of those people that never got to have their own children? What of those people who never got married? What about the college dropouts? The terminally ill? What about the people who never even got to fall in love?

Did that make their lives less?

In the end, though, I pushed these intense thoughts away and forgot about them, chalking it up to the fatigue and extreme hunger.

After an hour and a half of playing, hunger had won out over the initial fun of the game, and we put the board game away. I would have won, I was pleased to realize. But we were all miserable with hunger by now, and waiting to eat no longer seemed like an option.

The basement remained quiet, with no footsteps coming up to the other side of the door. For a few tentative minutes, we all kept shooting glances at it, becoming less and less expectant as the clock ticked by. Nothing. It didn’t seem like Professor would be coming after all.

“Maybe we should just eat without him,” Bubbles said, a hesitant look on her face. She didn’t look like she wanted to, but we all _were_ pretty starving. I was relieved she had been the one to say it. One of us had to. “Maybe he’ll come up later to eat. There’ll still be lots of food left over.”

So, after exchanging glances, all of us decided to finally sit down at the nicely set table and eat.

Brick carved the turkey like a pro, and we passed around the big dishes full of stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables and potatoes. We ate our disproportionately large plates of food and talked and joked, feeling warm and full and enjoying ourselves just like we had during the game.

Today in general, the atmosphere around us all felt light again for the first time in days. For a little bit of time, we forgot for a while about monsters and crazy reporters and that three circle emblem. For a little while during that Thanksgiving, everything was normal.

We didn’t know it, but it would turn out to be the last time we would all be so happy for a long time.

Long after the pumpkin pie had been served, after the boys had left after hugs and kisses with stuffed bellies and some food in tupperware to keep with them at their dorm rooms, my sisters and I had crashed onto the couch, half watching a dog show on television and half waiting for any sign of life from the basement. The dog show ended, and some other show began to play, along with commercials for upcoming holiday specials.

At some point, we all nodded off. A couple of hours later, Professor finally emerged from the door, and we woke up.

We all sat up groggily as he walked into the room, slightly taken aback at the sudden sight of him.

“Hey, girls. Is it time to eat yet?” He looked strange—haggard, hair sticking out, full mad scientist appearance in effect. And his eyes were wild, as if he were paranoid about something unexpected jumping out at him that he had to be ready to fight off.

We looked at each other, frowning, then looked at him again. “Professor, we already ate hours ago,” I said slowly. “We called you when it was ready, but you didn’t answer us. Didn’t you hear us calling you?”

He raked his hand through his wild hair, blinking hard. “Oh, no. I suppose I didn’t.” He looked over at the windows, squinting at them. He didn’t have his glasses on. “What time is it?”

“Professor, it’s 8:30.” Bubbles was staring up at him in concern. “Don’t you have a clock down there?”

“Of course I do,” Professor said. “I guess I just uh…lost track of time, is all.” He clapped his hands together. “Well, there’s still food left, isn’t there? It smelled really good.”

I exchanged one more look with my sisters. How did he lose track of time so easily? And how did he not hear us shouting and pounding on the door earlier? I stood up from the couch groggily. “If course, there’s plenty left. Come make a plate, I’ll reheat it for you.”

I watched him pile food onto his plate, and then I put it in the microwave for him. Setting the time on the microwave and starting it, I turned away from it as it hummed, glancing over at Professor. He wasn’t looking at me; instead he was looking at the floor, the walls, his hands, anywhere else. I studied him in silence.

Buttercup wandered into the kitchen, looking at Professor carefully. “You missed the parade, you know.”

He looked up—his head jerked up, actually, like he was surprised, like he hadn’t even heard her walk into the room. “Oh, that’s right. I completely forgot about that, we always watch that together. How was it this year?”

“It was alright,” Buttercup said flatly. Without moving her head, she shot me another look that said, ‘What the heck is wrong with him today?’

Pressing my lips together, I broke her gaze, turning back towards the microwave and looking at the food rotating in a circle inside. There was one minute left on the timer.

“You still could have come up and watched it with me if you really wanted to,” Buttercup continued mildly, and I turned back around to look at her again. She raised her eyebrows at him. “Even just for a few minutes.”

“Buttercup,” I said quietly. She shrugged at me.

“No, that’s fair,” Professor said to me, and then he turned to Buttercup with a mildly apologetic look. “You’re right, Buttercup. I’m sorry I didn’t. We’ll definitely catch it together next year, I promise.”

Her face softened up then, her mouth curving up at one corner. She unfolded her arms, saying, “Well. I’ll be in the living room with Bubbles.” And then she left the kitchen.

The microwave beeped, and I opened it up, taking out his plate of hot food. When I turned back around to hand it to him, he was leaning against the counter, his face downcast and staring down at his feet. My stomach lurched. My dad rarely ever looked that way. He looked…haunted? Maybe even sad. What reason did he have to be sad?

“Dad,” I said, staring at him. “Are you okay?”

Professor’s gaze jerked up again, snapping out of it. “Oh, yes! Of course, sweetheart. I’m fine. Just hungry, is all. I don’t think I’ve eaten at all today.” He looked downward, seeing that I was holding his food. “Oh, it’s ready! Fantastic. This looks so good. You girls did a great job cooking without me. Thank you, sweetie!” He took the plate from my hands, an overly big smile on his face. It looked strained, somehow. Like he was hiding something.

Slowly, unsure, I smiled back. “You’re welcome,” I told him. “Let’s go sit down.”

Bubbles, Buttercup and I sat with him at the dining room table as he ate, and he went back and forth between talking about unrelated, random things, and being completely silent. When we asked him if he was all right, he would go back to chatting again, with that unnatural smile of his.

Something was wrong, but even I couldn’t figure out what it was.

My sisters and I traded looks, saying nothing.


	11. Cold

**Chapter Ten**

**-Blossom’s POV-**

White frozen peace.

We had been back at school for a week, and that Friday, after I woke up in the morning, I tip toed towards the window first thing as always to let the morning light in, wrapping my arms around myself for warmth. And as I drew back our thick curtains, I saw it.

The first snow of the season. Coating every building on campus, covering the ground like a cottony blanket. It fell peacefully from the sky, quiet and soft. Staring out at the frozen world, it seemed like the entire city was still asleep, covered in a calm white slumber.

There were barely any cars driving on the streets below, no noise coming from the other dorm rooms. I imagined everyone else at their windows, staring out at the tranquil sight outside, too.

Tip toeing as quietly as I could across the hardwood floor, I went over to Buttercup’s bed, shaking her shoulder gently. My sister’s wake the dead snoring immediately stopped. She groaned, rolling over. “Buttercup,” I whispered. “Wake up.”

Still half asleep, eyes closed, Buttercup whispered back her complaint, “Why are you doing this to me?”

I softly shook her shoulder again. “Come on, I know you’ll want to see this. Buttercup, it’s snowing.”

A pause, and then she rolled halfway back towards me, cracking one eye open. “You aren’t just lying so I’ll get up, right?”

I nodded toward our window, smiling. “See for yourself.”

After a few more tugs on her arm, I eventually convinced her to get up and come across the room, and she followed me over as I dragged her by the hand, squinting against the morning light coming in. As soon as she was standing in front of the window, not squinting anymore and actually looking at the world outside, her usual grumpy morning expression softened and then left her face completely. Something that usually only a big mug of coffee could accomplish. “Oh,” she said softly. A teeny grin of subdued delight tugged at the corners of her lips.

Loving the snow was always something I’d shared with my sisters. It always reminded us of the snow days we’d had when we were kids, building snow people and making snow angels and having snowball fights with Professor. Nowadays, to me at least, snow symbolized peace and happiness. Quiet nights indoors being curled up with a blanket, a hot cup of tea, and a good book. Warm sweaters and hats. Beautiful holiday seasons with friends and family.

I watched Buttercup watch the snow fall down, a quiet contentment on her face that I rarely ever saw on her. The snow always brought the best of miracles to me in the most unexpected ways.

I turned away, starting up our little coffeemaker. As I waited for it to brew, I walked over to the only chair we had in our dorm room and dragged it over to the window, lightly pushing down on Buttercup’s shoulders so she would sit down in the chair. She complied without complaint, not tearing her eyes away from the white bliss outside.

I went back over to the coffeemaker and took out the mini pot with the fresh coffee, pouring some in her green mug and some in my pink mug, adding some sugar and gingerbread flavored creamer to mine. I grabbed the pink knit throw blanket off of my bed, and rejoined Buttercup at the window. Wordlessly, I handed the green mug of black coffee to her, squished into our arm chair next to her, and then draped the blanket around the both of our shoulders.

“Thanks,” Buttercup said, taking her mug and wrapping her hands around it gratefully, letting the warmth seep into her skin. There was a small, satisfied grin on her face.

“You’re welcome,” I told her, then I held up my mug of coffee for a toast. “To the first snow.”

“Cheers.” She raised her mug to mine, and they clinked together.

For quite some time during that serene morning, we sat there at the window, cuddled up in the blanket we shared, sipping our coffee and watching the snow fall.

Looking back, it was a really nice way to start the day. It was rather beautiful, the way we were so oblivious to the how the rest of that day would turn out to be, and how abruptly our lives were all about to change forever.

After all, if we had known, it would have made enjoying that little moment impossible.

#

I started noticing that something was off during my break before my third class of the day.

There was a small ache in my head, in the middle of my forehead.

As it was very small, and seemed very insignificant, I brushed it off. ‘Probably a caffeine withdrawal symptom,’ I thought to myself. I’d had two mugs of coffee that day, and even though I never usually had withdrawals, it was still a possibility.

So, I bought a bottle of water along with a granola bar for a snack, thinking that would help. Then I tucked my soft pink scarf closer around my neck, put on my hot pink gloves, and headed out in the cold to my next class, thinking nothing of it.

In my class, College Algebra, we were doing a book assignment based off of that day’s lecture, meant to be our homework for the night. This was the last major unit we had until the final, which was just a week and a half away. It was nothing I was particularly worried about. The lecture had been nothing, and the work should have been easy for me.

However, as I opened up my book and looked down at the assignment, the same spot in the middle of my forehead began to throb again. This time, it was a little worse. I hissed in through my teeth, pressing a few fingers there, willing the ache to go away.

It was peculiar. I never got headaches.

Headaches were something that my sisters and I and the Rowdyruff brothers never experienced, along with common colds, regular stomach aches, and allergies to things. But it seemed that I was having a bona fide headache for the very first time.

I took a few more gulps of water, frowning. ‘Maybe it’ll pass soon,’ I thought, looking up at the clock on the wall. There was only five more minutes of class left. ‘Just five more minutes, then maybe I’ll head down to the medical quarters for some painkillers.’

I wasn’t positive painkillers would work for me—in fact, I was almost certain they wouldn’t, the Chemical X in my bloodstream would probably burn them up before they could even take effect—but it couldn’t hurt to try. Since I’d never had one before, I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Gritting my teeth with determination, refusing to leave class without at least starting on my homework assignment, I looked down at my book again, reading the first equation. I waited for the solution to flow from my brain down to my pen like water, the way solving math equations always felt for me.

But…wait. There was something wrong. I stared at the problem hard. And stared. And stared even harder.

It made no sense.

I…didn’t understand it.

It was like reading a foreign language, only I could instinctively speak every language on the planet fluently from my studies of foreign languages at an early age. And math had never been a challenge for me before, ever. Solving math equations was like breathing for me.

So what was happening right now?

I stared at it harder, at every little symbol and number. It felt like there was a concrete wall in my mind. I read the equation in front of me over and over, but I couldn’t comprehend what it meant, or how to even begin to solve it. Sweat beads formed on my forehead.

Then, as I tried to concentrate harder, it hit me all at once—so swiftly and unmercifully that I could never have seen it coming. An explosion of pain, directly behind my forehead and spreading back to the top of my head and to the backs of my eyes.

Crippling, shooting, splitting pain that I had never felt before in my whole life.

The sudden shock was so great that I dropped my pen, and it fell down to the floor. My vision blacked for a full few seconds, and I covered my mouth, shutting my eyes, biting back the urge to scream.

I felt the girl sitting next to me looking at me. She leaned close to me. “Hey Blossom,” she whispered. I could barely hear her, my ears were ringing. “Hey. Are you okay?” What was her name? Why couldn’t I remember her name?

Blinking hard until my vision came back in spots, I finally saw her face staring into mine, pale and shaken. I must have looked as terrified as I felt. Managing to nod, I dropped my hand from my mouth, trying to gain back some semblance of normalcy. “Yeah,” I spit out. My head exploded again at the noise of my own voice, and I cringed, my teeth grinding together. I tried to breathe calmly, but I was huffing, and I couldn’t seem to control it.

“You don’t look okay,” she said, unsure. “Should I take you to a hospital?”

“Class dismissed,” the professor said abruptly from his desk, and the class began packing up their things and leaving through the door.

Turning to my classmate, I rushed out to her, “No, I’m okay. Thanks for your concern. I’ll be all right,” with what I hoped was a smile, and as she returned my smile and turned to leave, I threw my things into my bag, grabbing my water before dashing out of the door. My head screamed and nausea hit me every time my feet made contact with the ground, which looked like it was swishing and swirling around like water.

Somewhere in the part of my mind where the agony wasn’t overwhelming, something screamed at me not to panic. But I knew something was terribly wrong inside of me, and I didn’t know what, and that made it impossible not to panic.

Finding a bench to sit down on, I sat, throwing my things beside me, and ripped my phone out from my back jeans pocket. Scrolling down to Brick in my phone, I hit _CALL_. Thankfully, it only rang twice. “Baby? What’s up?” I rarely called him during the school day, and I could hear in my boyfriend’s voice that he already knew something was wrong.

“Brick, please come and get me,” I whimpered to him in the softest voice I could manage. With every syllable, a strike of lightning hit my brain, and pain danced behind my eyelids. “There’s something wrong with me.”

* * *

 

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

That morning had been the most beautiful, memorable morning I’d had in a long time.

After waking up early with a video call from Boomer—with his bed hair and morning voice and all—calling my sisters on the phone before their first classes to talk about the snow, and then eating my breakfast, I bundled up as quickly as I could, donning my puffy powder blue coat and white scarf.

Then, before heading into my late-morning class, I sat outside on Phi Tappa Kegga’s front porch, enjoying the peace and letting the snowflakes build up in my hair, which stuck out from around my white earmuffs. I held out my hands and caught the flakes in my sparkly white mittens, counting their numerous different patterns and designs and watching them melt into the yarn fibers. Then I walked to class, going slowly just so I could feel the snow crunch satisfyingly beneath my boots.

The day had started off so good that not even the rude professor in my psychology class could ruin my perfect, wonderful mood.

Between my classes, I skipped through the grumpy cold crowd of people on campus, humming and twirling through the snowflake filled air. Even slipping and falling down once or twice and getting laughed at wasn’t enough to destroy my mood.

The whole day had been perfect. Until after my fourth class.

After leaving the building, I walked to the campus square to find a bench to sit on. I’d been sitting on one of the cold metal benches for some time, enjoying the frigid air, when someone began to walk past me, walking a puppy on a leash. I gasped, standing up from the bench, gazing at the animal in adoration. The furry little brown dog leaped through the piles of snow with glee, trouncing around and wagging its tail.

“Excuse me,” I said, making my way over to them cautiously. “Could I please pet your puppy?”

The owner turned to me and then smiled, adjusting his glasses and looking at me. “Sure. His name’s Kai. Don’t worry, he won’t bite. He’s very friendly.”

Overjoyed, I stooped down to Kai’s level, smiling widely. “Oh, I’m sure he is. Is this his first time in the snow?”

“It is. He’s only 8 months old.”

“Aww,” I scratched behind Kai’s ears, grinning down at him. “Do you like the snow, Kai? Huh? Do you, baby boy?”

Kai barked, wagged his tail, then barked again. It took a few seconds for the overwhelming sense of there being something wrong to hit me, but when it did, it had the force of a 16-wheeler. The smile immediately dropped off of my face, a stricken expression taking its’ place. I stopped petting Kai abruptly.

I felt the dog owner looking down at me. “Is there something wrong?”

I paused, staring down at Kai. He stared back up at me, puppy eyes wide and trusting and completely unaware of my sudden all-consuming horror. “Oh. No,” I said, patting the puppy’s head again. I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. “It’s just…”

“It’s just what?” He asked.

Hoping that the owner wouldn’t hear me, I leaned down closer to Kai. “Try talking to me again,” I whispered to the puppy. Kai yipped again, licking the tip of my nose. His bark echoed in my ears. I leaned back far away, the undeniable feeling of wrongness slamming into me again and my heart dropping down into my stomach.

The owner was staring at me, I knew he was. “Are…you okay?” He probably thought I was crazy.

“I have to go now. Excuse me.” I quickly got up from the snowy ground, avoiding the guy’s gaze and turning on my heel. I brushed the snow off of my mittens, patting them together. I heard Kai whimper as I hurried away, turning a corner, leaving the square as fast as I could with my heart pounding.

Finally getting to a quiet place where I knew no one else would find me, I stopped against a brick building, slumping against the wall and trying to straighten all of my thoughts out.

It didn’t make sense.

The dog. He had talked to me. And I couldn’t understand him.

He had barked, and that was the only thing that I heard. My mind hadn’t automatically translated the sound into English, like it had always done before.

That couldn’t be right. That was impossible. It couldn’t be.

Maybe I hadn’t listened closely enough. Or maybe the puppy had been too young for me to communicate with. Maybe it was just a mistake I had somehow made.

With a jolt, I heard a flock of crows land on the ground a few feet away. I whipped my head around to stare at them. I watched closely, watched their every movement. They fluffed their feathers, pecked along the snowy ground, and then one cawed.

The birds’ noise was all I heard. It clanged against my eardrums, foreign and strange. Just bird sounds. No translation in my head, no words that I could understand.

It hadn’t been a mistake.

Something was terribly, horribly wrong. What was the matter with me? Why couldn’t I understand them?

Once again, I slumped back against the wall of the building I was next to, feeling the ground tilt. Panic rose in my chest, heavy and suffocating, threatening to swallow me up. I had to get back to my room. I had to go back to my dorm, get inside, sit down somewhere and call Boomer.

Getting a grip on myself, I righted, standing up straight. I took a few deep breaths, trying to get myself to focus as the cold air stung my lungs.

I went all the way back to my dorm at a full run, the snowy, icy sidewalks barely slowing me down.

* * *

 

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

The white ground suddenly rushed up towards me, and I could only cover up my face with my arms before the impact. I collided with the open field. Snow covered my black coat, flew up into my face, into my nose, fell down into my scarf. My backpack had come up and slammed into the back of my head.

I pushed myself up with my green gloved hands, staring down at the snow in confusion. What the hell?

I had just gotten out of my last class before lunchtime. Leaving the building, and looking out at all that awesome snow, I’d impulsively decided to take a celebratory fly through the snowflakes. It was one of my favorite activities when it snowed; just flying through the frigid air, feeling the flakes hit my cheeks and sting my skin. Flying through the snow felt like nothing else, the rush was invigorating. I hadn’t done it since February, and I could barely wait to do it again after so long.

So I’d come straight outside, got in a secluded enough area that barely anyone would see me take off, and I lifted into the air. And now, somehow, I was on the ground. How had that happened?

Sighing, I stood up. ‘Must have not been paying enough attention,’ I thought for a second, and then frowned. My hands, which had been brushing off my clothes, paused mid-movement. That thought hadn’t made any sense. Flying didn’t require any thought. It was like running, or placing one foot in front of the other to walk. It wasn’t something you _thought_ about. You just did it.

Shrugging it off, I straightened my straps on my backpack, then readied myself to take off again. Slamming my foot into the ground to get more momentum, I took off, feeling the frigid air hugging me from all sides. I smiled in satisfaction.

Then before I barely had time to comprehend it, the horizon tilted sideways.

I was falling.

Letting out a surprised shriek, I turned my eyes toward the white ground, rushing up at me again, and then squeezed my eyes shut. _BAM_. Cold powder directly in my face, the snowy ground directly underneath my body. The wind knocked out of me, I lay there momentarily.

What was going on? Why was I on the ground again? Opening my eyes, I turned my head, looking up at the sky. Was there something wrong with the air, maybe? Was it too cold to fly? Could the air molecules not hold on to me?

I pushed up from the snow again, glowering. I picked up my green beanie, which was flung off of my head during the impact, and pulled it back on impatiently. Those thoughts hadn’t made sense either. We never needed a specific kind of sky or weather condition to fly in, ever. I shook it off. Whatever this was, it was getting on my nerves fast. I was going to fly in the snow today, whether the sky wanted me to or not.

I rolled my sleeves up to my elbows, exposing my bare skin to the cold air and making my focus laser sharp. Then I got a running start. I ran, foot after foot, and then when I felt like I was getting enough speed, I took off into the air, flew for five feet—then dropped back down to the ground like a rock.

I got up again, snatched my backpack straps, yanked them off my shoulders and chucked the bag onto the ground with a growl. Once more, I jumped, lifted into the air, and then started to tilt again—my fingers clawed through the air as if I could grab onto it and pull myself up to keep my body airborne. I toppled onto the ground once more, face first.

I couldn’t place exactly when my annoyance had flipped a switch, turning directly into fear—maybe it had been somewhere between falling and then hitting the ground—but when it came, it was instant.

A sudden, suffocating terror gripped my chest. My hands shook, grabbing at the ground as if I didn’t recognize it.

I lifted my face, and tiny clusters of ice fell off of my cheeks and chin. Very slowly, I stood up again. With tight, deliberate focus, I stood still, and instead of breaking into a full, reckless fly right off of the bat as usual, I tried to gently levitate myself off the ground. As my feet began to take off the way that they usually did, suddenly I felt a pin pricking, numbing sensation in my heels and toes.

And then my shoes came back in contact with the snow, barely having lifted up six inches.

It wasn’t my focus. It wasn’t the coldness of the air.

I couldn’t fly.

My heart was ricocheting in my chest cavity, punching into my ribs, sending acute fear pulsing throughout my body. Trying to think straight, I took out my phone, feeling like I was going to puke but trying to hold myself together. With shaking and cold hands, I dialed the one person I knew would answer no matter how busy he was.

“Hello,” said Butch on the other end of the line, and then he paused, hearing my silence. “…Buttercup? Are you there?”

“Come take me home. Hurry.” I tried to keep the bleakness and panic out of my voice, but it wasn’t working. I tried to breathe calmly, but instead I breathed in and out noisily, my breath coming out in hot puffs of steam into the cold air.

Hearing my tone, his tone immediately changed. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

No. Something was really wrong, and I wasn’t okay. The hand that held my phone shook even more. “I need to see Professor. Right now. Take me home.”

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

On the ride to my childhood home in Brick’s car, I was already having a hard time trying to keep calm.

My head was still exploding with pain, and I had my head between my knees, trying to move as little as possible to keep the throbbing from getting worse. Brick was driving as fast as he could manage without getting a speeding ticket, and he kept saying to me, “You’ll be okay. You’re gonna be fine, baby. Everything’s okay,” even though he sounded like he was trying not to freak out. I didn’t answer him, I couldn’t. I just kept my head down and my teeth clenched together, trying not to scream in pain.

Unfortunately for us, rushing to get anywhere in the car in this type of weather was just not possible.

Eventually, after the seventh time the car’s wheels swerved uncontrollably underneath us and my nausea got even worse, I bit out to him through the ache as succinctly as possible, “I would much rather get to my house in one piece than crash, cause an accident and take even longer to get there.” After that, cautiously, Brick slowed his speed down, and we stopped slipping on the ice.

Finally we arrived, and after parking in front of the house, Brick quickly got out, came over to my side of the car, threw open the door and undid my seatbelt for me. “That’s weird,” he murmured.

Bracing myself for the resulting throbbing, I spat out, “What is?” Pain burst, and I squeezed my eyes shut, biting down on my lip hard.

“My brothers’ cars are here.”

I opened my eyes, slowly lifting my head and looking out the windshield. Sure enough, Boomer’s blue Audi and Butch’s green Lamborghini were parked in the driveway. Against the throbbing, I whispered, “Why are they here?”

“I don’t know. Let’s get you inside. Come here, I got you,” Brick said gently, then he turned so his back was facing me. “Get on my back.” Sluggishly getting out of my bent over position, I let myself fall forward on his back, folding my arms around his neck. He hoisted my legs around him, pulled me out, shut the car door, walked over the snow covered walkway and carried me to the door. His breath puffed out through the surrounding cold. After I silently handed him my house key, he unlocked the door and pushed it open, and we were immediately greeted by some unexpected guests.

“Blossom!” It was Bubbles. She had stood up from the couch, and she covered her mouth with both of her hands at the sight of me on Brick’s back.

Boomer followed, looking ahead at his brother in shock. “What happened to her?” He walked past us to close the front door.

Before Brick could answer, Buttercup, along with Butch, appeared next to us. She looked jittery and panicked—completely unlike her usual self, even while under pressure. “Tell me what’s wrong. Something’s wrong with her, right? Something happened?”

“Please put me down,” I whispered to Brick, and he walked me over to the couch, bending down and softly letting me settle on it. He reached up with his hands and wrapped them around the back of my head, setting it down on the soft cushions so that it wouldn’t jostle further. I slumped back into them and looked over at my sisters, grimacing. “Try not to talk too loud. My head is killing me.”

“Can I get you anything?” Brick asked anxiously, smoothing a hand over the top of my head gently. “Water? Anything that might help?”

Buttercup talked over Brick, not heeding my request and repeating loudly in disbelief, “You have a headache?” She looked over at Bubbles. “I told you! I _told_ you. It’s not just you and me. Something is going on.”

Bubbles sat down on the couch next to me, asking me softly, “What brought this headache on? What were you doing when you got it?”

Wishing I didn’t have to keep talking, I sighed, took a slow, deep breath, and forced the words out through the pain because I had no other choice. “When it first started, I didn’t think it was anything. It was barely an ache. It didn’t get worse until I started my work during my math class. I suddenly couldn’t understand any of my homework, the pain was so bad that I could barely think at all. It felt like my skull was splitting open.”

Everyone in the room stared at me in horror.

“You…couldn’t understand your math homework?” Buttercup asked, breaking the silence. Solemn, I nodded gingerly.

“Oh my God,” Bubbles said.

Before I could ask them what they were doing at home, too, Buttercup cried out, stomping over to the basement door. “Why isn’t he coming _up_ here? I know he can hear us!” She stopped in front of the door, pounding on it unrelentingly and screaming, “Professor, get up here! This is a freaking emergency, this is not the time to be Mr. Hermit Science Guy!”

I was grasping my throbbing head hard between my hands, hunched over and squirming, and Bubbles had her hand on my back. “Buttercup! You’re hurting Blossom’s head, stop!”

She stopped yelling and pounding, and instead, I heard her jiggling the doorknob hard, enough to break it off. “I’m going to get this door open one way or another,” she fumed.

Finally, there were rushed footsteps up the stairs, and I heard the basement door open up. The ache had waned slightly, so I opened my eyes and lifted my head to see Professor finally come into the room, glaring down at Buttercup with a look of surprise on his face. “Girls? What are you doing here, don’t you have school?”

“Yeah, we did.” Buttercup said, stopping in front of him and folding her arms. Her voice rose in volume as she continued, “But then Blossom got a headache and couldn’t remember how to solve math equations, Bubbles all of a sudden can’t talk to animals anymore, and when _I_ tried to fly this morning, it was like I didn’t know how anymore.” She narrowed her eyes at our dad, but there was fear written all over her face.

My stomach had dropped at what she’d said, feeling the same fear inside of me. Bubbles couldn’t understand animals? Buttercup couldn’t fly? I hadn’t tried to fly today, but what if I couldn’t fly, either? And Bubbles, too? My heart began to race. I looked over at Professor, and while he looked reasonably shaken at what Buttercup had said, he didn’t look surprised. Not the least bit.

What was going on?

At Professor’s silence, Buttercup said, in a voice so low that after her screaming before, it almost seemed like it hadn’t even come from the same person, “We need to know what’s wrong with us, and we need to know _now_.”

The quiet room pulsated with tension.

Finally, Professor walked further into the living room, looking at each of us before he said in a subdued voice, “At least you’re all here now, so I can tell you all at once. I…was hoping I’d have some more time before I had to. I thought maybe that way I’d figure out the best way to say this. But it seems I’ve run out of time.”

His words were so ominous that it nearly made me forget about the pain in my head. All I felt was overwhelming dread.

Standing in front of us all, his hands folded, Professor began. “To start with, I’m sure all of you have been wondering what my results are from all of my hard work these past few weeks. I’ve been working and researching nonstop to make sure that all of my findings were accurate. I didn’t want to misread any of it, or make any mistakes.” He paused heavily.

“So, what did you find?” I prodded him in a quiet voice, since no one else was speaking up.

He took in a long breath. “As I examined the sample of flesh that you saved for me, Blossom, I found something strange. What I had originally conjectured was that they were made from Chemical X, but what I found wasn’t quite that.” He straightened his glasses. “What they _were_ made from was a chemical designed to _mimic_ Chemical X. A clone, if you will. But in order to make this clone chemical, whoever made it would have to have possession of real Chemical X to model it after, atom by atom.”

“Impossible,” Brick said, frowning.

“That’s what I thought too, Brick,” Professor admitted. “I wondered how it would even be possible that someone besides me could even have possession of Chemical X. But despite my initial doubts, I then decided to determine what the age of the original Chemical X had to have been from the condition of the copycat chemical. After some long and arduous experimentation and analyzation, and a lot of frustration, I finally found it. I determined the age of the original Chemical X to be about 20 years old. I thought that was strange, because that was about the exact same age of the Chemical X which I keep in the armed safe downstairs—and therefore, the exact same age of the very small sample of Chemical X that I donated to the Townsville Science Museum fourteen years ago.

“At this point I was even further confused. On a whim, I decided to call one of my old friends at the museum to check on my donation, just to make sure all was well with it, and as it turns out, the sample…” He trailed off, pausing for a few moments, as if he couldn’t believe what he himself was saying. “…the sample was _purchased_ one year ago. The purchase was kept under wraps because it was an extremely wealthy person that bought it, one of Townsville’s top 1%, whose reputation would be ruined if the public found out they had bought an illegal substance. Apparently they paid 2 million dollars for it. One million for the chemical, and one million for the museum’s silence.”

“No,” said Buttercup, horrified, just as the rest of us were. “That’s so messed up.”

I stared at Professor, feeling my stomach drop as I realized something. “But Professor, wouldn’t that mean that the composition of the copycat chemical would be exactly—”

“Exactly like the Chemical X I used to make you girls. Down to each and every atom. Yes.” Professor finished for me, avoiding my gaze. “And now that I had a clearer idea of what kind of creatures you all were dealing with, I could determine what had caused their mystery deaths. There were no obvious answers at first—they weren’t sick or diseased, and from what all of you said, none of them were injured. It wasn’t clear at first, but after some time of closely examining the sample, I noticed something.

“The cloned chemical was…well, its composition was falling apart. What had originally given the chemical its potency now seemed to be expiring from the inside out. I continued watching the sample over several days, measuring its radioactive properties and keeping track of them in a chart, and it turned out that I was right. The radioactiveness in the chemical had not just gone dormant, but it had expired altogether.

“After discovering this, another conjecture that I had was that the clone chemical itself was cheaply made, probably by some sort of computer or machine that didn’t do it correctly. This could have explained why the monsters had died so suddenly, a direct product of the knockoff, flimsy chemical running through their veins. I could have just left it alone then and there, but something was still nagging at me. Something still felt off. So, just to be absolutely positive, I decided…” He suddenly stopped, bringing his hands up and wringing them together uneasily. His eyes were glued to the floor. He seemed like he was unable to continue.

Bubbles’ soft voice penetrated the heavy, silent terror in the room, the rest of us too afraid to speak up. “What, Professor? What did you decide?”

Professor looked her in the face. For the first time that I could ever remember, the most rational, most logically sound, most intelligent man that I had ever known looked scared, too. It looked like it physically pained him to continue, but somehow, he did. “I took a sample of DNA from all three of you girls while you were asleep. Right before Thanksgiving. I just…I just wanted to be sure that…I didn’t think…”

I was trembling. He hadn’t said it yet, but somehow, I knew what was coming. I didn’t want to believe it. “Professor?”

Finally, vulnerably, he met my gaze. Terror met terror. “I’m sorry, girls. I’m so sorry.” He took a shaky breath, then uttered the sentence that changed everything. “The Chemical X you girls are composed of is starting to fade, too. All of your powers weren’t working today because they’re going away. Possibly forever.”


	12. Overture

**Chapter Eleven**

_“True knowledge comes only through suffering.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning_

**-Blossom’s POV-**

“ _Recent scientific research conducted by the famous Professor Utonium has revealed that Chemical X—discovered two decades ago by the Professor himself—loses power and potency over time, and that after a certain amount of years, it may burn out completely. This new finding was discovered by a series of experiments on a sample from one of the monsters from the monster army attack last month. The chemicals inside those monsters expired the same way Chemical X does, only at a much more accelerated rate, which is why about half of them died prematurely. This new finding answers many questions that all of us had about that fateful day, but brings us some new ones to ponder: What does this mean for the future of the Powerpuff Girls and the Rowdyruff Boys?”_

My eyes slid shut. Another tear slipped down my cheek.

We’d been sitting silently, watching all the news reports—local and nationwide—based all on the new information we’d already learned just hours before. After telling us, Professor had hesitantly gone to call all of the local news stations with the news. They’d predictably gobbled it up, and just in time for the evening news programs. Ratings gold, probably.

An empty, numb shock had fallen over all of us for the past few hours. My sisters and I had been crying—Bubbles and I hugging each other as Buttercup sat by herself, facing away and wiping her tears before she thought anyone could see them, refusing to even let Butch comfort her. He sat behind her and stared, his hands hovering by his sides as he watched her cry helplessly.

Brick was right next to me, holding my hand tightly. He looked pale—paler than usual, and he could barely even look at me.

With all of the crying I’d been doing, my head had begun to throb again. I let it rest back against a pillow, slumped against the couch cushions, all of my energy drained from me. Through the aching, I said in the quietest voice I could, “You don’t think they know, do you?” I was talking to Brick.

There was a pause, then he said, “No. None of them have mentioned anything for sure about you and your sister’s powers. I don’t think he told them.”

I shut my stinging eyes. “Good.” I didn’t think I’d be able to take it if they’d known. Seeing mine and my sisters’ health issues paraded all over the news like some juicy scoop. I’d never hated seeing Professor’s name all over the news so much until this moment.

I turned to look at Bubbles, who had finally stopped weeping, but was still locked tightly in Boomer’s embrace. Boomer looked absolutely stricken. He looked as if letting her go even for a moment would be like watching a delicate ceramic teacup smash apart on the concrete. And seeing the look on Bubbles’ face, that assumption probably wasn’t too far off.

This moment felt eerily like the evening where we had come back here, in these very spots, after destroying the army of monsters in Townsville Park. At that time, we had all been so upset. The room had also had a similar hopeless aura filling it up. It hadn’t been that long ago, but now it seemed so far away. Looking back now, it seemed so tame. Harmless. I wonder how we all would have felt then if we had known what was to come in the near future.

Hearing a noise, all of us looked up to see Professor coming back up from his lab, carrying a small black box with him. I very slowly started to sit up, intending on greeting Professor and asking him what he was carrying in his hands.

In the same moment, I saw Buttercup briskly leap up from the carpet where she’d been sitting. At that moment, my head had been hurting too much for me to even think to notice the look on her face.

If I had, I would have seen the fury. And I could have prevented what was about to happen.

As he entered the room, she came running at him, pushing him savagely with all of her strength. Professor was thrown against the wall behind him with a mighty smash and a loud pained grunt, the box flying out of his hands and clattering against the ground.

Bubbles shrieked in horror, covering her mouth with both of her hands. Forgetting my pain, I immediately shot up from my seat, dropping Brick’s hand.

“Buttercup!” I shouted. Ignoring my nausea and vertigo, I rushed over to Professor, gingerly helping him stand up again. Fear in my voice, I asked him, “Are you hurt?” He shook his head at me, avoiding my gaze. He didn’t appear to be hurt, at least not badly. Brick had come over too, holding his other side as he stood. Professor’s glasses were askew, and there was empty shock on his face. Knowing he was all right now, I turned my eyes sharply to my sister again, glaring at her in incredulity. “What is the _matter_ with you?”

Buttercup looked deadly. Her eyes were so dark that they were almost black. She was shaking with rage. “Get out of my way, Blossom.” She spoke through her teeth. Butch had stood up as well, coming over and lingering at a safe distance behind her, hands up and ready to restrain her if needed.

Brick and I stood side by side between her and Professor, forming a protective wall. Brick commanded, his face stony, “Stand down, Buttercup.”

“ _Shut_ the fuck up,” Buttercup shot back at him, glowering and venomous. “I don’t take orders from you, you condescending piece of shit.”

“Buttercup!” Butch shouted. Brick was just staring at her, mouth dropped open in silent astonishment.

I’d jolted at the insult she’d thrown at my boyfriend. She hadn’t spoken like that to him in years. “ _Hey_ ,” I barked at her, taking a step closer to her. I felt my face burning with my growing anger. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? Calm yourself down or I’ll do it for you. Am I clear?”

“Who do you think you are?” Buttercup spat, and it took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t talking to me. She’d leaned slightly to the side and was looking behind me. She was talking to Professor. “Are you really a scientist, or have you been faking your way through your career? If you’re such a good scientist then how come you couldn’t have figured this out faster? Before we had to come here and confront you and you were _forced_ to tell us when it was already too late? What are you, some sort of coward?”

I was horrified at all of her accusations. My face drained. My voice rose with upset. “ _Buttercup!”_

“How dare you do this to us? How _dare_ you make us think that we were invincible? If we were so damn invincible this wouldn’t be happening right now!” Her neck and her entire face turned a darker shade of red as she bellowed; I could see veins standing up in her forehead.

I was afraid to look at Professor behind me. I could almost perceptibly feel his sadness and guilt sweltering off of him as strongly as I could feel Buttercup’s anger.

She continued yelling. “Why didn’t you know this would happen? Couldn’t you have used one of your stupid scientific equations to figure that out? Why couldn’t you have made us perfect?” Her eyes had gotten bright, softening with tears though her anger still remained plain on her face. Her final question came after a long pause, and it was fragile. “Why did you make us if we were just going to fall apart?”

Buttercup’s final question rung in the silent air. A mighty wave of grief had risen up inside of me, seizing my heart like a fist, stinging the back of my throat and rendering me wordless. The only noise for a while was the sound of Bubbles sobbing into Boomer’s shoulder.

Seeing the cords in Buttercup’s neck relax, and seeing the red beginning to drain from her face, I deemed it safe enough to step away from Professor. I cleared my throat and blinked back the tears. “That’s enough, Buttercup.” I said to her.

“It’s all right, Blossom,” Professor said, speaking up for the first time. His voice was foggy, and he cleared it. I risked a glance back at him, and as soon as I did, I regretted it. His guilt ridden expression was unbearable. “I deserved it. You all have every right to be upset with me. She has the right to say all of that.” He looked at Buttercup. “I just hope that one day you’ll be able to forgive me.” He looked at the rest of us. “All of you.”

After a long moment, Buttercup slowly shook her head. Then she uttered, “No. I can’t forgive you.” Behind the sadness in her eyes, there was a certain cruelty. “I’ll never be able to forgive you for this.” Her bottom lip trembled, and then she backed away, walking straight over to the front door. She opened it, walked out into the cold, snowy night and slammed the door behind her.

With an unusually palpable look of worry on his face, Butch started to follow after her. Then he paused, turned to Professor and said, “She doesn’t mean it. She’s just upset.”

Professor nodded slightly, trying to offer him a smile but still looking sad. “I know,” he said. It was perhaps the first moment of genuine kindness I had seen between the two of them on their own in a while.

With a final nod, Butch looked down at the floor, said, “I’ll go after her,” and then disappeared out the front door after her.

The room was quiet for another minute, still pulsating from Buttercup’s rage. Bubbles was still crying, and Boomer was still comforting her. Brick had turned away, his hands laced behind his neck as he calmed himself down. After gathering myself, shaking off her unforgiving speech and pushing the fear and sadness down, I turned to Professor. “Are you sure you’re not injured?” I asked him, needing to be sure. He was leaning against the wall now, and I couldn’t tell if he was leaning because he was physically injured or if it was because of the terrible things Buttercup had said.

Professor took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m fine, I promise. Maybe I’ll get a bruise here or there, but I’ll be okay. Mostly a little rattled.” He tried to smile, and failed.

I looked at him, deciding he was telling the truth, and then I looked to where the black box Professor had been carrying dropped onto the ground. I bent and picked it up, staring down at it. It had a combination lock on it. I stepped toward Professor, handing it to him. “What is this?” I asked.

He took the box in his hands. Blinking away the sadness on his face, he tried again to smile as he looked at me. “I’ll show you. Go sit down.”

I turned to walk over to the couch, sitting down on the arm of it. He followed me over, thankfully not limping or wincing, and then I knew he really was okay. Bubbles, along with Brick and Boomer, lingered nearby, watching us curiously. Bubbles’ eyes were puffy from crying.

Professor was working the combination lock. “Do you still have that headache?”

At the mention of it, my head throbbed in answer. I grimaced. Now that the drama had died back down, I could feel it strongly again, squeezing my brain insistently and cruelly. “Yes,” I said.

He finished the combination, and the box popped open. Inside, there were four syringes, full with black liquid. He held his hand out. “Arm, please.” I stretched out the arm that was closest to him, and he gently took it by my wrist, first running a white cotton pad covered in alcohol over the inside of my arm, sterilizing it. He threw it away, then took my arm by the bicep, picking up one of the syringes. “This will pinch a little,” he said, offering me a soft grin.

Bracing myself as I saw him bringing the needle towards me, it slowly sunk into the inside of my elbow. Professor squeezed the syringe, pushing the liquid directly into my bloodstream. Gently taking the needle out of me, he set the syringe into the box again, watching me carefully. “How do you feel?” He asked me after a few seconds.

A strange surge went through me. I looked down at my arm and blinked. Then I tilted my head one way, and then the other way. I pressed a hand to my forehead. No throbbing. The aching had immediately gone away. “My headache’s gone,” I said in relief. Bubbles, Brick and Boomer reacted at the same time, shocked.

Boomer exclaimed, amazed, “How did you do that, Professor?”

Brick had already turned toward my dad. “Chemical X shots. Right?”

Professor nodded at him, looking mildly proud that he’d guessed so accurately. “Correct. Chemical X shots.” He turned the box of syringes toward all of them so they could see. “I’ve only been developing them for the past week or so, along with daily Chemical X ‘vitamins’, which should be ready in the next day or so. But these should stave off negative symptoms and keep you and your sisters from feeling bad. I’m also working on heavily concentrated emergency Chemical X shots that will fully supplement your powers again for a short time. They should enable you to still fight crime—but only when you absolutely need to.”

I beheld my father proudly. I knew he’d thought of something. I knew he wouldn’t just keep us in the dark. “Professor, you’re brilliant. I feel great again.” Brick was staring at me, intense relief coloring his features, in stark contrast with the panic that had been all over his face for most of the day. I smiled at him. He smiled back.

Professor looked down at me, modest. He smoothed a hand over my hair. “I’m just glad it worked, sweetheart. I’m happy all of that work wasn’t for nothing.” He closed the box again, locking it. “The regular shots and vitamins each only supply a small amount of Chemical X at a time. That way, your bodies shouldn’t become immune to them.”

After discussing the shots and vitamins for a few more minutes, a small touch of hope coloring all of our expressions that hadn’t been there just hours before, the front door burst open. Butch pulled Buttercup through it by her hand. A mix of wariness and relief rose up inside of me at the sight of her back in the house. Even though she wore a bitter expression on her face, it was welcome compared to the rage from before.

“We’re back,” Butch announced, shutting the door behind them. He looked down at my sister with the usual tenderness he always looked at her with, even when she acted like a Tasmanian devil. “We’re very sorry. We’re going to sit and listen to what everyone has to say calmly. And we’re not going to scream, insult or push anybody. Right?” He tugged on her hand.

Buttercup’s nostrils flared, shooting her boyfriend a glare. “Whatever,” she said. She and Butch came into the living room, sitting on the floor, Butch still holding her hand. Underneath the bitterness on her face, though, I could see the remorse in her eyes at her behavior earlier. Whatever Butch had done or said to her to make her calm down and see reason, I was thankful for it. He always seemed to be able to do it.

We caught them up, telling them about how my headache was totally gone thanks to Professor’s shot, and telling them all about the shots and vitamins. Buttercup’s face softened up a bit after that, knowing that there was a solution now and we weren’t just sitting ducks.

“So, will that stop our powers from going away more than they already have? The emergency shots?” Buttercup asked, hesitantly addressing Professor directly for the first time since she’d blown up at him.

Professor, looking slightly surprised that she was talking to him, carefully shook his head. “No. They’ll only bring your powers back temporarily. The length of time it’ll last should depend on how quickly it’ll take to fade. And as for your powers right now, I’d say they’ll continue fading the way that they started to today. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for them to fade completely, but considering the rate they’re going already, I don’t think it will be long at all. However, the Chemical X vitamins should prevent you from feeling bad, like what Blossom was experiencing.”

Buttercup just nodded her head slowly, pressing her lips together. That had not been the answer she was hoping for.

“So, what happens when our powers fade completely?” Bubbles asked next.

“Well, Bubbles,” Professor said, folding his arms. “You’ll probably be feeling pretty average. You won’t be able to rely on your powers for everyday things anymore. Also, you’ll probably feel tired, and be more vulnerable to human problems. We’ll find out what those are specifically as they come.” He shrugged at us. “Basically, you’ll be more like humans than you’ve ever been before.”

My stomach twisted with unease at that.

“But Professor,” Boomer cut in, “Why is this just affecting them? Why isn’t anything happening to us, too?” He was frowning, confused. “We’re made of just as much Chemical X as they are, aren’t we? So what gives?”

Before Professor could answer, I did. “I think it’s because we’re older,” I said. I’d reached this conclusion on my own; it had been something that I was thinking about earlier after the big reveal. “We were made almost an entire year before you were made.”

“She’s right,” said Professor, nodding. “And you were also made in a slightly different manner than the girls were. Since Mojo didn’t make you in a lab with my Chemical X, there’s no telling exactly how it’ll eventually degrade. But it’s been nearly the same amount of time, so both versions of Chemical X are close to the same age.”

There was a moment of loaded, heavy silence.

“Then this might be us too,” Brick said quietly to his brothers. “Soon.”

Butch turned to Professor. “How soon?”

Professor looked at him grimly. “It’s hard to say the exact amount of time. It’s hard to say this is how your Chemical X will deteriorate, if it will at all. But if I could examine some samples of DNA from you and your brothers, I could make an educated guess.”

The brothers exchanged glances and nods, a wordless discussion, then Brick turned to Professor. “We’ll do it,” he said.

After gathering some supplies from his lab, Professor came back up and took some DNA samples from the boys. He encased the samples in tubes and individual plastic bags. Then, before he took the samples back down to his lab, he turned to my sisters and I. “Girls,” he started softly, “I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, but…I think it may be best if you stayed home tonight and tomorrow, so that I can keep an eye on you. I’m sorry if you had plans, but I would hate for something to happen while you weren’t here again. I don’t want to worry.”

I exchanged a look with my sisters and then nodded at him and said, “Sure, Professor. We will.”

He left to his lab, locking the door behind him once again. The turn of the lock felt so loud.

We said goodbye to the guys, exchanging tight, somber hugs and promises to call. They hated to leave us, but we insisted, so they did. All three of us watched them drive back to UofT in their cars from the front door. After we couldn’t see the taillights of their cars anymore, we went inside, locking out the cold air.

That night, I barely slept. At one point, I sat at my window. Turning over the events that had taken place over and over again in my mind, I frowned, staring out blankly. The snow day that had started out so peacefully was now so grim. The world was enshadowed in white and darkness. But how could they both exist so easily at the same time?

I rested my palm against the window. For moment, I let it rest there. Soon, much sooner than it would have before, my skin began to sting against the bitingly cold glass, and I drew it back. Hollow, I turned away from the window sill, walked to my bed, and laid back on it. I closed my eyes, not wanting to have nightmares but wanting that awful day to end anyway.

And finally, mercifully, after endless turning and thinking I possibly may never sleep again, the end came.


	13. Human

**Chapter Twelve**

_“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” – Ralph Ellison_

**-Blossom’s POV-**

One by one, all six of us strode into the room of reporters, and the question shouting immediately began.

I looked out at them, controlled impassiveness on my face. They all stood up from their seats, leaning toward us eagerly and staring at us like ravenous wolves. The only thing that protected us from them actually leaping at us was the fact that we were on a stage and security guards were standing between us and them.

It had been years since we’d last done a press conference as a six member team—the last one we’d done was in high school a couple of months after our reconciliation, where we’d officially announced that the Rowdyruff Boys had renounced their villain lives and that they were going to help us protect the city from that point forward. That conference had been quite the controversy at the time. It had made headlines across the world for at least a week. Things had eventually settled down in the subsequent months, though, and everyone had pretty much come to accept our new arrangements as one big super team.

This conference, though, was to put a stop to—or at least calm down—all of the media frenzy and all of the Internet rumors that had run rampant ever since Professor’s announcement two days ago. We’d been rehearsing and preparing ourselves for this conference for days, and we were hoping for the best.

Of course, no matter how much we rehearsed, we couldn’t have been fully prepared for the chaos.

We sat in our individual chairs at a long, plain table with bottles of water on it, facing the sea of faces, roaring voices and flashing cameras. For a split second, I realized that this might be what it’s like for animals in zoos. At that moment, I sure felt like one.

Sara Bellum—the Mayor’s assistant, and female role model extraordinaire—was hosting the press conference, donning her signature red dress suit, curly red hair coiffed with not a single lock out of place and still managing to look perfect in her mid-forties. She looked back at us with a reassuring smile. I smiled back at her, or at least I tried to. I turned a quick glance in both of my sisters’ direction, and Bubbles looked just as pallid and uneasy as she had looked before we’d come onstage. In Buttercup’s case, she had her impassive warrior’s face on, not letting any of the crowd see the terror that I knew she felt. I looked away from them, making sure to keep my public friendly neutral expression intact.

Ms. Bellum had turned back towards the rabid media and she took a breath to speak into the microphone. “All right, all right. Settle down. Hold your questions until the end, please. We’ll start with the two leaders of our heroes’ joint statement to the public.”

That was our cue. With a deep breath, I stood from my seat. Brick stood from his, too. I took another quick glance at my sisters, and they both gave me supportive nods. Boomer and Butch gave Brick their own silent—albeit slightly uneasy—looks of encouragement. I locked eyes with Brick for a moment, and then side by side, we made our way to the front of the stage, where two podiums with microphones were standing.

I waited until Brick was done adjusting his microphone so that it would reach his taller height, and then seeing him nod at me to start, I shook off my invisible nerves, took my microphone and spoke.

“Good evening, members of the press and citizens of Townsville.” I said. I kept my tone as professional as possible. “We’ve organized this press conference tonight to clear up some misunderstandings that have arisen since the publicizing of the recent findings of Chemical X by my father, scientist Professor Utonium. Some media sources have made it sound like because of this recent discovery, my sisters, the Rowdyruff boys and I will be retiring from crime fighting. That is simply not true.” I looked over to Brick, cuing him to start his part next.

Brick spoke into his microphone, looking out at the cameras and press and taking on an air of ease and calm that sometimes even I couldn’t manage when I was in leader mode. Whenever I saw him look that way, it made pride bloom inside of me. “These claims of our retirement, and the claims that we are all unwell are untrue. Professor’s findings do apply to us in certain ways, however.” He paused, looking over at me. ‘Are you sure you want to tell them this?’ His eyes said. I nodded almost imperceptibly. He drew in a breath, then looked out at the press again. “The Powerpuff Girls are indeed experiencing slight problems with their superpowers at the moment.”

In an instant, the crowd roared with exclamations and questions again. The sheer volume of them was almost scary. For a moment, I felt tempted to walk off the stage. I gripped my microphone stand tightly. I felt grateful for the delicate, vague way he’d worded it. No need to tell everybody that we were basically becoming humans. Who knows how they would’ve reacted to _that_.

I allowed them a few moments, pausing and waiting for them to settle down. Then, when the crowd wasn’t as loud, I continued from where Brick left off, taking a deep breath so that my voice wouldn’t be shaky. “This will not pose as a problem, though. Professor Utonium has invented a solution that will help mine and the girls’ powers to work again perfectly. We will still be able to protect and serve Townsville to the best of our abilities. You all have no reason to worry.”

Brick continued, raising his voice above the steady stream of noises coming from the reporters, “My brothers and I haven’t experienced any issues with our powers, and we’ll continue to protect Townsville with the girls to the best of our abilities as well.” What he didn’t add, though, was that after Professor examined their DNA, he’d guesstimated that their powers would start fading away soon, too. In a month or so, he’d said.

Pushing that thought down, I said my final line in the speech, forcing a big, phony smile onto my face. “We were born to protect this world, and we will continue to serve that purpose. Thank you.” As soon as I signaled the end of our short joint speech, the shouting began again, possibly even louder than before. For a brief flash, the rabid sea of press reminded me of the ocean of monsters from a few weeks ago, braying and shrieking. I blinked hard, shoving that image away.

Ms. Bellum’s voice rose over the shouts again, speaking into her microphone on the right side of the stage. “Excuse me, excuse me. One question at a time, please. Wait until I call on you. Shouted questions will be ignored.” She looked into the crowd, then pointed at a woman standing near the front. “You right there, go ahead.”

The woman walked forward to the sole microphone stand provided for the press. “Thanks, Ms. Bellum. Blossom, my question’s for you. What solution exactly did Professor Utonium invent for you and your sisters?”

I cleared my throat, answering, “We can’t divulge what exactly the solution is to the public just yet. However, we can confirm that they do indeed work, and that they’ll be reliable.” Well, except for the emergency shots, we hadn’t been able to test those yet, they weren’t ready. Professor was still in the final stages of developing them. But they didn’t need to know that.

After thanking me, the reporter stepped away from the mic. Ms. Bellum looked out into the crowd again. “Okay, you there,” she said.

Another woman. “Blossom, why isn’t Professor Utonium here? Is he hiding from the public?”

I suppressed a sigh. “No, he’s not hiding. He’s hard at work in his laboratory perfecting his solutions to our little problem, so he wasn’t able to make it here today. That’s all.” Not to mention he’d been racked with guilt over what was happening to us, even after Buttercup had apologized to him and they had made up. There had still been a certain darkness in his eyes ever since.

Ms. Bellum picked a new reporter. A man stepped up this time. “Yes, hello. My question is, if we don’t know for sure what the solution is, how do we _know_ that it’ll work?”

The question and answer sessions during press conferences had always been my least favorite. Once again, I restrained myself from sighing, trying to answer as politely as I could. “Because sir, we’ve tested them several times already. I assure you, they do work.”

“So, what, we’re just supposed to take your word for it?” He said into the microphone skeptically. His eyebrows were raised at me, and he was staring at me dryly. The reporters around him chorused in agreement. I guess he would be the first entitled reporter of the evening.

I blinked. “Yes,” I said simply. I felt Brick shift next to me. Even without looking over at him, I knew this reporter was pissing him off.

He countered again, “But what if you’re lying to us? How are we supposed to just believe you?” The crowd roared again. I grit my teeth. Brick gripped his microphone hard, taking a breath to tell this guy off.

Stepping in before Brick could make a mess of things, Ms. Bellums’ voice rose up again, more stern this time. “That’s enough, sir. Each person gets one question and taunts are not tolerated. Go sit back down in your seat before we have you escorted out.” The entitled reporter scowled, eyeing the menacing security guards that had stepped toward him and went back to his seat.

I’d placed a hand on Brick’s shoulder, gripping it, trying to get him to look at me. Finally, he did. ‘It’s fine. I’m okay.’ I hoped that was what my face was saying, and not distress. Thankfully, the muscles in his shoulders relaxed, his face softened, and he dropped the hand from the microphone. After rubbing his shoulder gently, I dropped my hand.

“Okay, you there. What’s your question?” Ms. Bellum called, and a new reporter stepped up to the mic.

The new reporter pushed some round glasses back up her nose bridge. “Hi. Blossom, my question is, do you really think we believe that this supposed solution Professor Utonium is developing is supposed to work flawlessly? Didn’t he think Chemical X was a flawless chemical?” Noises of agreement rose again.

My stomach dropped. That question had struck a nerve. But I kept the neutral expression on my face. “Hi, thanks for your question. I know the solution sounds hard to believe, but Professor came up with them after a ton of careful research. I have faith that they’ll work, so you should, too.” I was glad that my answer had sounded confident.

I had also thought of the emergency shots maybe not working when it came down to it. But I would keep those worries buried. The vitamins worked. So did the shot that Professor used to take away my headache two days ago. The other shots would work too.

They had to.

A new reporter was called up to the microphone. “Brick, my question is for you. Why aren’t you and your brothers having issues with your powers?”

My throat tightened. I didn’t let it show on my face.

Brick had regained his calm air. He answered easily, “Well, if you recall, me and my brothers weren’t created by Professor Utonium. The Chemical X used to make the girls wasn’t used for us. So it’s possible that we won’t have issues with them at all.” He had said the last sentence so breezily, I would have believed him too if I hadn’t known the truth.

Ms. Bellum dismissed that reporter and then picked a new one. This reporter stormed right up to the microphone. “My question’s also for Brick. Have you considered what you and your brothers would do if you started have trouble with your super powers too?”

“We would start the same treatments that the girls are on,” Brick answered immediately, leaving no space for speculation.

The next reporter stepped up to the microphone. “Blossom, hi. You know, if you really wanted all of us to believe that the solution for your powers works, why don’t you use it in front of all of us here, so the world can see?” The rest of the room echoed in assent. A few people stood up, clapping.

Trying not to let the response get too out of control, I answered immediately as Brick had before. “I understand your point, but using them in an enclosed area with so many people would be far too dangerous. It’s for emergencies only.”

The another reporter shot out, speaking out of turn, “You don’t consider this an emergency?”

Shaking my head, I worked hard to keep my voice from sounding strained. “We don’t have them here with us, and even if we did, I wouldn’t be willing to possibly put everyone in here in danger. It would be out of the question.”

A baritone voice in the back of the room shouted out, “What are you hiding, bitch?”

The effect was immediate.

Several things happened at once: Behind us, Buttercup shouted in rage. Half the security guards at the back of the room went after the shouter at the back of the room, dragging him out of the room as he tried to fight them away and he continued to shout, “Don’t believe them! It’s a conspiracy! It’s all a part of their plan!” Ms. Bellum motioned toward the sound guys somewhere backstage to cut off our microphones and the reporter’s microphone. And I flung my arms around Brick and clamped onto him tightly just as his feet began to lift off the ground, about to fly after the shouter, any and all feigned calmness completely gone from his face and replaced with red-faced and nearly unhinged fury. As soon as he felt my touch, he froze in his tracks, even knowing that I wasn’t strong enough now to stop him. The flashes of cameras, all capturing this very chaotic moment, were almost blinding.

“Forget it,” I whispered to him, only low enough for him to hear. “He’s not worth the mess. There are cameras documenting our every move. The public would never forget about it for as long as we live.” At this, my boyfriend’s muscles reluctantly relaxed, and his feet touched back onto the ground. He wrapped his arms around me too in a brief, stiff hug. I looked at him carefully as I let him go. His face was still angry, but he kept silent.

The guards were now escorting more reporters out of the room, and arguments had sprouted up throughout the room. Things were getting out of control. Above the riotous noise, Ms. Bellum spoke into her microphone, now the only mic that was left on. “In light of that outburst, the press conference will end early.” She turned to us, and I couldn’t help but notice the slight glint of sympathy in her eyes. “Heroes, you are dismissed.”

I took Brick’s hand. We turned away from the unruly, wild crowd and fell into step, going back over to where our respective siblings were now standing up from their seats. All six of us marched off that stage again, leaving the zoo behind.

Once backstage and hidden from cameras and criticizing stares, Bubbles turned to me and immediately wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tightly. “Bloss, I am so sorry you had to do that. Are you okay?”

I hugged her back, slightly shrugging my shoulder and letting the stress and weight of responsibility finally crash down on my back. “It’s nothing I’ve never done before,” I joked weakly.

Buttercup shook her head, glowering. “No. That was all kinds of messed up. I was about to go jump that guy, if I could’ve just flown over there…” Her voice trailed off somewhat bitterly. Bubbles released me, and Buttercup immediately wrapped her arms around me next. “Sorry, Pinky. You shouldn’t have had to put up with that. There’s a special place in hell for these bloodthirsty cockroaches.”

“I almost went to kick that guy’s ass myself, if Blossom wouldn’t have stopped me,” Brick said, giving me a good natured dry look. He still looked pissed off, but in a less violent way. He was clearly still cooling off.

I shook my head, returning his dry look. “Forget him, Brick. He was just some overzealous tinhat that got past outdoor security. No one worth creating more of a mess over.”

Bubbles went over to him next, giving him a side hug. “Blossom’s right. It’s probably best that you didn’t,” she reassured him.

Brick hugged her back and looked down at her with a slight grin, not arguing our point. Butch clapped him on the back sympathetically. Brick finally heaved a heavy sigh, looking as if the stress had finally got to him too. “I’m so glad that’s over with.”

“If it was me, Blossom wouldn’t have been able to stop me,” Buttercup remarked, letting go of me and glancing at Brick pointedly.

I looked at her sideways, arching an eyebrow. “That’s exactly why I asked you to stay seated with everyone else.” Buttercup shrugged, smirking.

Boomer came over to me and gave me a brief hug and a kind smile. “You both did well, though, considering the circumstances. I was proud of you guys. We all were.”

“Thanks,” I said modestly as I hugged him back, though not quite agreeing with him.

Butch had come over to me too, giving me a supportive pat on the head. “Yeah, you did great. If that was me up there, I would have snapped after just a few questions.” He looked between Brick and I. “Good job, leaders.”

We smiled at him, albeit a little uneasily.

Surely the news coverage of the conference would focus solely on the outburst from the angry guy that had broken in and the rushed ending, rather than our carefully thought out answers and composure. But that was the least of our concerns at that point. It could’ve been much worse. Slipping up and accidentally spilling the truth about what worries we were really dealing with right now would have been catastrophic.

We started to leave, wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. Going out of the most discrete back entrance of the building, there were unfortunately still paparazzi there waiting for us, cameras flashing and aggressive questions flying. Walking quickly away and evading them as best as we could, although overwhelmed, part of me was relieved that this whole ordeal was over.

Quickly packing into each of the boys’ cars, we all drove away, leaving that hell hole behind.

#

Days later, it was finals week at Warner University.

Despite the outright absurdity mine and my sister’s lives had become over the past week, Professor still held our education at a high regard—as did I, of course. So that entire week, we took our finals, like we were every day average students at that school.

We were, really—our powers had pretty much faded almost completely by now.

It was weird. I was used to seeing and hearing everything I wanted to within a hundred feet of myself. Every whisper, every footstep, every flap of a birds’ wing. Even hearing through walls and entire floors of buildings had been no problem at all.

Now the noises of everything sounded muffled. I needed to strain myself to hear people even twenty feet away from me. I found myself having to turn my music up louder in Buttercup and I’s dorm room, I felt like I could barely hear it when it was down low, which was my usual volume setting.

Was this how humans heard everything? How did they go through life hearing so little?

And my sight was a different story, too. At least I could see what was in my immediate area just fine, but what about far away? How did humans look for things across town? Maybe that was why binoculars were invented. I mean, I’d already _known_ that, of course. But it finally made sense to me why humans would need such inventions—binoculars, telescopes, helicopters, other things of that nature. They provided them ways to experience life the way we do.

Well. The way we used to.

Currently, I was walking through the snow to my usual café. It was close enough to campus that I didn’t really _mind_ walking, it just took some time. It kind of made me wish that my sisters and I had gotten our driver’s licenses in high school anyway, Professor’s reservations about it be damned.

Walking past an electronics store with TVs sitting in the window, I slowed to a stop as I heard something unfamiliar coming from one of them. I stared at one of the televisions and realized that a foreign television show was playing on it. I concentrated. It sounded like Italian, but I couldn’t understand it. Not anymore. Somewhere in my head, there was a small, distant ache, letting me know that I was pushing my luck of not having a migraine for the past couple of days.

So I turned from the television filled window, walking away through the crowd of pedestrians.

My feet were really sore from having to walk everywhere, especially in the snow and ice. A few days ago, I had tested my flying abilities with Bubbles in our backyard. No luck. Our feet had hovered a half foot off the ground, gone numb, and touched back to the ground after a few seconds. Flying was officially off the table until we could test out Professor’s emergency shots. I missed it already.

With three hours before my next final, I stepped through the front door of our favorite café. The heat inside was on high, and the warmth was welcome.

I had some more intense studying to do. Since I couldn’t rely on my photographic memory, as I usually did before, I had been studying five times as hard as normal for my tests.

After ordering my eggnog cappuccino, then taking it with me as I sat down at a table by myself, I was getting all of my supplies out of my bag when I heard a familiar voice.

“Blossom?”

I looked toward the direction of the voice, then almost dropped my books onto the ground in pure shock. “Oh my God,” I said, staring. “Steven?”

My ex-boyfriend from the beginning of my junior year of high school. There he was, standing right in front of me for the first time in three years.

Grey eyes, average height, and platinum blonde hair as short as ever. His stubble had grown into a full beard now, and I couldn’t deny that it changed his whole face. He looked more grown up with it, less boyish and vulnerable. He wasn’t even wearing one of his once signature brightly colored sweater vests, he wore a black long sleeved turtleneck instead. And replacing his old rectangle framed glasses, he now had glasses with thick black, square rims.

He seemed to be there by himself. And despite the way things had ended between us, Steven was smiling at me earnestly. Even though I didn’t deserve it. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. He walked closer to me. Now that he was closer, I noticed a tattoo sticking out from the collar of his shirt. Steven? With a _tattoo?_ “I know you probably don’t recognize me. It’s been so long.”

We hadn’t seen each other since I’d dumped him for another boy _in front_ of the other boy—a.k.a. Brick. On the night of the homecoming dance. Which was weeks before he’d changed his number and transferred high schools just to get away from me. So, yeah. It had been a while. “Of course I recognize you,” I said, setting my stuff down and standing up from my chair.

He stopped right in front of me, holding out his hand for a handshake, then looking down at his own hand, realizing how awkward that was. He dropped his hand.

I began to go in for a hug, then I realized that was even _more_ awkward, and my arms dropped back to my sides as he laughed the same nervous laugh that I hadn’t heard in ages.

“I guess this is kinda awkward. Sorry,” he said, grin still on his face. “I just thought I’d come over here since it’s been forever since we’ve seen each other, and—”

“No!” I said, stopping him. “No, I’m glad you came over here, Steven.” I gestured to the other empty chair at my table. “Sit with me?”

“Sure,” he said.

I turned to sit down in my chair, and as he sat down across from me as he held his cup of coffee, I kept glancing at him. I couldn’t help it, it was weird seeing him again after so long. Especially since he looked so different. He almost looked like a completely different person. I offered him a grin. “It’s good to see you again.”

Steven looked at me in his genuine Steven way, his grey eyes as warm as the air from the central heating. “It’s good to see you too, Blossom.” He paused for a moment, probably debating over whether it was okay to say or not. In the end, he said it anyway. “You look good.”

That old familiar guilt struck my stomach, the way that it always happened back then whenever he would give me a compliment, and I looked down at my drink, picking it up to distract myself. “Thanks, Steve. So do you.” I took a long sip of my hot drink.

“Still with that Rowdyruff Boy?” He asked bluntly.

I choked on my drink a little, the question catching me off guard. He hadn’t wasted any time. Guess we were going to do this right away. “Um,” I paused, gathering myself and setting my mug back down. “Yeah. I am. We’re still going strong.” Hesitantly, I looked up at him.

He’d looked away from me, too. His eyes were fixed on the table. The look on his face was unreadable. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment, tapping the tips against the table top, nodded slowly, and then met my gaze again. “Good. I’m happy for you.”

I wanted to ask him if he really meant that, but there was no need to push it, I figured. That had probably been hard enough for him to say, considering what I’d put him through. I smiled. “Thanks.”

Steven, quite predictably, changed the subject. “So, what are you doing these days?”

“My sisters and I go to Warner University. Finals week,” I gestured to my mountain of study gear. ‘Also, we’re losing more and more of our superpowers by the day, and our entire future is slowly becoming uncertain,’ I added in my mind. I didn’t say it aloud, though. No need to drag him into my messed up problems. I flipped the question on him. “What about you?”

He took a sip of his iced coffee. I thought it was a little too cold outside to be drinking that, but maybe drinking cold drinks during cold weather didn’t bother him. Yet another thing I’d never bothered to get to know about him. “I work part time at an electronics store, and I’m studying for my computer science degree at UofT.”

My eyebrows rose. “Oh, wow, no way. That’s Brick’s school.” Immediately, I mentally kicked myself for bringing up my boyfriend again. I may as well have been grinding his face into concrete. “Sorry,” I said, seeing the look on his face.

“No, it’s all right. I already knew that we go to the same school.” He toyed with the straw in his drink. “Sometimes I see him and his brothers around on campus. They’re really popular, so it’s pretty hard to avoid them.” He laughed once, a little bitterly.

I swallowed hard, nodding. Ouch. I understood, though. “So, computer science? That’s awesome.”

“Yeah, I like it.” Steven nodded toward my books. “What’s your major?”

“Biochemical engineering.” I answered, smiling with pride.

He let out a low whistle. “Damn,” he said. “Impressive.”

I waved a hand, my smile still not going away. “It’s nothing,” I said. At least it used to be, until I started getting those pesky super migraines that interfered with my photographic memory. It was a good thing I had a bag of Chemical X vitamins in my backpack to prevent them during the test.

Steven nodded, smiling at me. “I’m not surprised. You’ve always been brilliant.” He gestured around the café. “You know, I’ve never been here before, so it’s funny that I’d run into you here today.”

“Oh, I come here all the time,” I said. “It’s kinda the regular hangout place for me, my sisters, and the boys. We like it because it’s between our campus and theirs.” Realizing I’d just brought up my boyfriend _again_ , cringing inwardly, I finished feebly, “And they have really good drinks.”

Brushing off my boyfriend comment, he nodded again, though a little stiffly. “Yeah, this iced coffee is pretty good. I’ll probably come here again.” My hearing may have been worse now, but I could still tell when someone was lying.

I looked down at my notebooks and books, realizing that I had gotten no studying done so far. Catching up and revisiting a small bit of my past had been great and all, but maybe it was time to leave now. I’d go back to campus and go to the school library to study instead, so I wouldn’t bother Steven any further. Reunion time was over, that was clear.

I began to pack up my things, looking back up at him. “Well, I really hate to cut this short, because it’s been great, but I have to get going. I have one of my last finals in just a few hours.”

“Oh,” he said, looking apologetic. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hold you up.”

“No, you haven’t! Don’t worry.” As I put the last of my books in my backpack, I grinned at him. “I’m so glad I got to see you, Steve.”

After a moment of eyeing me, he returned my smile. “I’m glad I got to see you too, Blossom. I really am.”

Putting on my backpack, then putting on my pink gloves, scarf, hat and coat, I went to the counter for a moment to get a to-go cup for my coffee. Then I came back to the table, transferring my drink to the paper cup as Steven watched, then I snapped the lid on top of it, glancing back up at him. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime?” I didn’t know why I had asked. I already knew what the answer was.

He smiled stiffly. “Maybe,” he said. I wouldn’t.

Keeping my smile on, nodding acceptingly, I turned to leave, saying over my shoulder, “Happy Holidays.” I walked away, beginning to walk out of the café. As I pushed the door open to go back out into the cold, the bell above the door dinged.

Steven called to me from the table I’d been sitting at with him. “Hey, Blossom?”

Pausing, I turned, letting the door close again and looking at him. “Yeah?”

He looked at me softly, and for a second, I saw a glimpse of the boy in high school that had talked to me on the phone until dawn, and had come over to my house in the middle of the night just to hug me as I cried the tears of a broken heart. The boy that had loved me honestly and truly. “I really hope that you’re happy these days. I hope that you’re genuinely happy and that you’re healthy, and that you get everything that you deserve in life. That’s what I want for you.”

I gazed at him, momentarily too touched to speak, my eyes glassy with tears. Then I smiled at him. I could feel the vulnerability all over my face. I replied, the answer not feeling nearly adequate enough, but also genuine. “Thank you, Steven. I want that for you, too. Take care.” Even though I had not loved him back the way that he’d wanted, he still had meant a whole lot to me. Maybe in some way he always would.

And with that last exchange, we each got the goodbye we both deserved but never got those years ago. I left through that café’s door, trudged away through the snow, and never saw Steven again.


	14. Blue Christmas

**Chapter Thirteen**

**-Boomer's POV-**

Three days before Christmas, I sat on the Utonium's white couch and watched as Bubbles began rearranging the blue string of Christmas lights on the 9 foot tall white tree for the fifth time.

I knew that keeping busy decorating and fussing over the decorations that were already up was a sort of coping mechanism for her—something to keep her busy and her mind occupied on something. She'd been at it since we had all finished our finals weeks and Winter Break had started. My brothers and I were staying at their home over break, in a guest room Professor had set aside for us, since nobody was allowed to stay at the UofT dorms over the break, and I'd had plenty of time to observe her behavior over the past week and a half.

Her sisters had been doing the same thing—Blossom baking copious amounts of cookies that no single person could ever think to eat in their whole lifetime, and Buttercup kept busy in the garage with Butch, helping him do some regular maintenance on our cars.

I think it kept their minds off of their current conditions. I didn't blame them one bit, and I knew that my brothers and I would probably have to take up some distracting hobbies soon as well. As for Professor, he'd been holed up in his lab just like he had the week before, working tirelessly on perfecting the emergency Chemical X shots. We had barely seen him, aside from mealtimes, when Blossom made sure that he had something to eat.

I blinked, continuing to watch Bubbles.

She had to reach up on her tip toes to even reach midway up the tree. I could tell she was frustrated about no longer being able to float into the air on command for the simplest of tasks—she grunted and strained, stretching her fingers as far up as she could. Then she would fall back onto her heels, her arms dropping back down to her sides, slightly out of breath from the arduousness of the reach. Then she drew them in, folding them together for warmth. My heart tugged.

My girlfriend had always been short. But never before had I seen her look so…small. So vulnerable. Fragile.

That was the way I had always thought humans looked. So maybe it should have made sense in a way for the girls to seem this way now. But it didn't make any sense at all.

It had happened so quickly.

At first, all we'd had to focus on was the sudden absence of the girls' powers. But once that had sunk in for a few days, and then a week, and then three, other unforeseen things started happening.

Blossom's semi-regular headaches went away with each use of the Chemical X vitamins, but there were other things that the vitamins couldn't get rid of—like stomach aches, random muscle aches, and the strangest of all: allergies. The day that Professor had brought home their live Christmas tree a week ago, Buttercup had been thrown into a sudden fit of sneezes. Nobody had any clue what had her sneezing nonstop—until she'd left the room, was seemingly fine for a while, then came back into the same room as the tree and had an even bigger sneezing fit.

After that, the tree had to go. Professor disposed of it and went to buy the artificial white tree instead. At least it matched the rest of their house.

And Blossom seemed to have developed an allergy to certain kinds of tree nuts. She had been baking cookies with pecans in them, and after tasting the dough, her throat became itchy and began to swell up. Professor had given her a couple of his heavy-duty allergy pills and thrown out the rest of the dough. Since then, Blossom stuck to recipes without nuts in them at all, just to be safe.

There were also other, subtler things: visible signs of fatigue like dark circles, tiring after walking all day or even after running for a short time, having to squint to see even things not too far away, asking someone to repeat themselves as they talk, louder and less graceful footfalls as they walked, struggling with extremely dry skin or dehydration. Visibly human. Strangely imperfect. They were still themselves—yet they were somehow not themselves at the same time.

That would be us, too. I wondered if seeing this happen to them first would somewhat prepare us for it when it did finally happen.

I stood up, walked up behind her, and wordlessly folded her into my arms, wrapping my arms around her waist. Her hands closed around my hands as she settled back into me. Before, her hands were always the perfect temperature for us, always warm. Lately, they were colder. She seemed to be more vulnerable to temperature changes. All of the girls did.

"Do you need any help?" I asked her, trying to keep the worry out of my voice. I wanted to help her so she wouldn't feel frustrated and give up.

A slightly muted smile was on her face as she looked up at me. "Sure, sweetie. That'd be great." She pointed to an ornament hanging on a white branch to her right. "That ornament there—the snowman shoveling snow—can you move it for me?"

I carefully took the ornament off and held it gingerly between my hands—it looked so breakable and I knew that one was her favorite. "Where do you want me to put it?"

She pointed slightly above her head, smack in the middle. "Right there. I want to be able to see it from anywhere in the room."

I put it where she wanted it, then stepped back to let her observe. "Like that?"

She reached over and squeezed my arm, grinning. "Perfect." She continued looking, then pointed to silver bow near the left side of the tree. "That bow—could you move it, too? I want it here instead."

I picked it up, moving it to where she wanted it to be. I did this for a couple more ornaments she asked for, and then the both of us backed away from the tree and stood back on our heels for a moment, examining it together.

"Hmm," I said after a moment, looking at the tree for another second and then turning my gaze down to her. "I think it looks great. What about you?"

She pressed her lips together for a long time, scrutinizing it more, her nose scrunched up and her eyes squinted. Cute as hell. Then she lifted her hand, pointing to the very top of the tree. "The star," she paused. "It's crooked."

I turned back to the tree, tilting my head as I focused on the star. Then I straightened, still staring at it. It was, indeed, slightly crooked. "You're right," I told her. I looked back down at her, smiling. "Should I fix it?"

She smiled back, reaching over to hug my arm with both of hers and leaning her face into my shoulder. "Could you?"

"No problem," I told her, stepping toward the tree and winking at her. "It'll just take me a second."

Lifting up off of the ground and into the air towards the top of the tree, I reached up toward the star with my hand—then without even the slightest warning at all, it happened.

It was the strangest feeling. There was a sudden disconnect—like a thin thread inside of me snapping—and I plummeted straight down into the tree, bringing a few ornaments down with me as I crashed onto the carpeted floor.

It left me stunned. For moments, I was just blankly staring up at where the star still sat on the top of the tree, much further away than it had been seconds ago.

Bubbles was right next to me, stooped down and speaking to me in a panicked voice. It was like I couldn't hear what she was saying at first—the shock was overwhelming even my ability to hear. My full hearing came back in patches. I heard her shouting, "Boomer? Can you hear me? Are you hurt?"

Then, finally, I looked over at her, feeling numb confusion on my face. "What happened?" I asked her, frowning. My voice sounded far away.

She was smoothing a hand down the side of my face, seemingly trying to ground me and get me to focus on what she was saying. "Sweetie, you fell. You began to fly to the top, then you suddenly fell." She took my face between her hands. She repeated, "Are you hurt?"

I'd fallen? How had that happened? I shook my head, not comprehending what she was saying to me. I looked away from her for a moment, spotting at her favorite ornament on the floor next to my socked foot and becoming distracted. "Oh no," I said absently. "Your snowman."

"It's okay. It's not broken, it's fine," she brushed it off, still holding my face. "You're really out of it. Listen to me. Honey, I think it's your powers."

Her saying this brought me back to focus, and my gaze snapped back to hers. "What?"

"Your powers," she repeated. There was fear all over her face. "I think it might be happening."

 _No_.

As soon as she said this, I made to get up from the floor. She let go of me, letting me stand shakily. I had to make sure, I just had to.

Concentrating, I willed myself to lift into the air again—and nothing happened. My heels wouldn't even leave the ground. My heart began to pound. I looked up into the frightened face of my girlfriend, her fear mirroring the fear inside of me. "Oh God."

We held each other's stare for a few more moments, feeding off each other's fear, then Bubbles turned her head and shouted, "Blossom! Brick!" I just stared down at my own shaking hands, breathing hard, queasy.

Neither of us had said it, but we knew.

It was happening again, and if it was happening to me, it was happening to my brothers, too. Right at that very moment.

It was starting.

* * *

**-Bubbles' POV-**

As I descended the steps, the tiny jingle bells on my white and blue snowflake fuzzy socks jingled and jangled, announcing my arrival to anyone who was near. I gripped the side rail as I came down the stairs. Using the handrail was something I never used to do, but it had become a habit recently.

I felt so clumsy all the time. I was constantly tripping over the carpet and my own feet, as well as slipping on the linoleum in the kitchen. It was practically like I didn't know how to properly move my body. Really, though, I knew that I was getting used to not having my natural grace that my superpowers had given me anymore. Sometimes it felt like my limbs were too long for my body, for all the lack of coordination I handled them with now.

I knew my sisters were struggling with this too. And I knew the boys soon would too.

A couple of days ago, after Boomer and I had experienced his flying abilities failing him out of nowhere, Blossom and I had taken him and Brick straight down to Professor's lab in a panic. Professor tested them both, and Butch after we'd gone to go get him and Buttercup, and the discovery was made.

The boy's powers were fading now, too. Officially. And weeks earlier than Professor had originally guessed.

Professor had said theirs were fading away slightly differently than ours. Instead of fading in spots and gradually going away over a few days, their abilities seemed to be disappearing in large chunks, without even a trace. So instead of them being able to get used to their absence slowly, it happened suddenly—for instance, one hour their super hearing had been intact, then the next hour, they had muffled human hearing. With these sudden changes coming at them so unrelentingly, with no time to prepare, it left them all feeling disorientated and stressed.

It was a slight relief that the boys were staying with us over the holidays, so that Professor could keep a close eye on them and we were right there to help them through this, but it also left a certain stressed air in the house.

All of us were trying to cope with what was happening to us, and some days it was tense. I was trying my best to stay upbeat for everybody—as always, I felt like I was the only one that everyone could count on to make them feel happy. I tried to smile, I tried to laugh, even when the reality of what was happening would sneak up behind me and take me into its vice grip and the idea of being happy felt impossible.

Everyone needed me. Maybe if I pretended I was okay, everyone would be.

Now, it was the day before Christmas. Despite all of the decorations I had worked hard on putting up to make everything look festive, the house felt quiet and cold. To say that no one was really in the holiday spirit was an understatement. Still, I tried my best to lift the mood whenever I could.

Finishing my journey down the stairs, I went straight into the kitchen. Blossom was already in there, sitting in her fluffy pink robe and eating breakfast with Brick, who was also still in his pajamas and whose long dark coppery hair stuck out at all angles from his head. Everyone else was still asleep—or in Professor's case, in the lab.

As I padded toward the kitchen table, the both of them turned to look at me. I noticed that they saw me approach them a little later than they would have before. Slowed reaction times was something else that was new to all of us at the moment. Blossom smiled. "Morning," she greeted.

"Good morning," I replied, voice groggy. I glanced at Brick. Noticing the stress lines in his forehead, I offered him a soft grin. "Morning, Brick." His mouth was full of toast, so he didn't reply, just smiled slightly and nodded at me.

Blossom looked down at my feet, then pointed at them and said, "Nice socks."

"Thanks," I said. I picked one foot off the linoleum, giggling and waving it at her and making the jingle bells tinkle. That had even made Brick chuckle slightly, shaking his head at me.

Smile fading a little, my sister asked me, "How are you feeling?"

I shrugged as I went over to the cabinets and looked inside of them. "Tired. But I guess that's kind of normal now." After pouring myself a bowl of cereal and sitting down at the kitchen table across from them, I looked between them. "What about you guys?"

"I'm all right, actually," Blossom said. I wasn't sure if that was true or not, but I didn't push her. She looked over at Brick with worried eyes. "I'm not so sure about him, though."

Irritably, Brick frowned slightly. He finished chewing and swallowed. "You don't have to talk about me like that. I'm fine," he protested.

She reached over to smooth her thumb over his stubbly cheek, and the grouchy frown immediately melted off of his face. "I'm just concerned about you," she told him. She looked back over at me. "He woke up with a migraine this morning."

I froze with my spoon halfway to my mouth. "Just like yours?"

She only nodded, her lips pressed together grimly.

"Professor gave me a shot. It's gone now," he insisted in a soft voice. He reached up with his hand nearest hers to take it in his. He laced his fingers through hers. "I'm okay now. Don't worry."

Blossom sighed, looking only slightly less worried. "Tell me if anything else comes up. As soon as it happens. Okay?"

Brick only gave her a genuine crooked grin, bringing her hand up to plant a kiss on it.

A calm silence fell over the table as each of us finished eating, and then Brick and Blossom got up from their seats and went to go wash their dishes in the sink together. I finished off my cereal, then stood up from the table too. "I'm gonna go wake Boomer up," I told them, and then made the journey back upstairs to the guest room.

I pushed the door open as quietly as I could. Inside was Boomer on one of the three futon beds, sleeping soundly. Butch had spent the night in Buttercup's room with her, where he still was now, since Professor was too busy to notice.

I came a little closer to Boomer's sleeping form. It was something I didn't get to see very often, but had seen a lot of the past week. Long hair in a mussed tangle all around his head, soft and peaceful face. When he slept, he tended to either curl up into a ball like a little kid or splay out his long arms and legs across the entire bed—currently he was in a ball.

The sight was adorable, and I hated to wake him up and spoil his blissful slumber, but I had to make sure he wasn't feeling badly like Brick had when he'd woken up. So I reached down and gently shook his shoulder.

"Boomer," I whispered. "Sweetie. Wake up."

He stirred, turning slightly and cracking open bleary eyes. "Hmm?"

I leaned closer to him so I could keep my voice soft. I wasn't sure which volume was appropriate now. "How are you feeling? Does your head hurt?"

Boomer, still halfway under the haze of sleep, took a few seconds to comprehend what I had asked him, staring up at me with puzzled eyes deep azure, and then took a few more to figure out how to answer. "No," he finally mumbled in his husky morning voice, rubbing his eyes with a hand. "No, I feel okay. Really tired."

I smiled down at him. "Okay," I came closer and peeled back his blanket. "Go back to sleep for a while, then. Can I join you?"

Even still half asleep, he grinned up at me at my question and opened up his arms so I could settle inside them. "Of course."

I crawled underneath the blanket and settled in between his arms. He stretched his legs out and wrapped his arms around me, drawing me in close and resting his chin on top of my head.

Within minutes, we both drifted off to sleep.

#

Christmas morning was different from all of the Christmases that I'd had before.

All of us slept in until nearly noon, not waking up in the wee hours of the morning to tear open presents as we always did as kids. I wonder if that was because of how tired all of us where, or if that was just part of growing up.

Professor had gotten me and my sisters one present each, as he always did. Also as usual, my sisters and I had gotten each other one present each, and one for Professor from all of us. This year we'd gotten him a nice new lab coat—it was made of a thicker material, so he wouldn't get cold down in the basement during the winter months, and it had _Utonium_ etched in pretty black embroidery over his front pocket.

Our gift exchange with him was full of forced smiles and hugs, all of us feeling the weight of trying not to ruin Christmas with our sadness, but at the same time not being able to quite move past it, as if it was a giant elephant sitting in the middle of the room.

Boomer and I had decided weeks ago that we wouldn't exchange gifts this year. Our circumstances right now were too complicated, and we didn't want to add on any more stress than we had to. Besides, for me, him being there with me for the holidays was enough. I hadn't been sure of it, but when I noticed that Buttercup and Blossom hadn't exchanged any gifts with Butch and Brick, I realized that they had done the same thing.

After the gift exchanging had finished, all of us gathered in front of the TV to watch holiday movies. We had watched two when Professor excused himself to go back down to the laboratory for a couple of hours. During those few hours, the rest of us split up to do things amongst ourselves.

Boomer and I went outside to get some fresh air. The air was frigid, so naturally we bundled up, especially since we both tended to get cold much easier these days. All of the Christmas lights on the neighbors' houses were alit, white sparkly ones and festive rainbow ones, flashing red and flashing green.

Then, on one house down the street, I saw a lone house covered roof to ground with blue strings of lights. The blue was stunning—the shade of blue was frigid-looking itself, and lovely. But it also looked sort of lonely. I wondered if a family lived in that house, or if it was someone who lived alone. I wondered if they were as lonely as that shade of blue.

Finally looking away from those blue lights, I looked at my boots on the ground. It hadn't snowed recently, and so it left the outdoors in that weird state where it felt like winter on the skin and in the lungs, but it didn't quite _look_ like winter.

It almost always snowed in Townsville right before or on Christmas, so this left me feeling unexplainably strange. Unsatisfied, somehow. It hardly felt like Christmas at all.

But maybe that was what it felt like to grow up. When the glitzy veil of childhood lifts, and you see the world for how it is, maybe even the magic goes out of birthdays and holidays where it had always been before. Maybe Christmas would always feel this way now.

Hours later, all of us gathered and ate Christmas dinner. Conversation was scarce, and we kept a holiday movie playing on the television for noise to avoid awkward silences. The jovial pretense had run out, and even I had gotten tired of forcing it.

All of us were tired, so we called it a night after we had all finished eating. After hugging each other and saying goodnight, we all retired to our rooms, even Professor going to his bedroom to sleep.

The holiday had started quietly, and it ended quietly.

#

The days after Christmas were just as quiet and even more dull.

We continued spending quiet time separately or with each other, and the days between Christmas and New Year's blended together the way that they tend to during those few days, the odd regular in-between days with no holiday to celebrate yet but still having another one coming up soon.

And yet, even on New Years Eve, it didn't really feel like a holiday. Professor told us early on in the day that he had to make a run out of town for something having to do with the emergency shots, which he said were just about perfect. So he packed into the car that morning and left on his errand, and all 6 of us were left to our own devices for the rest of the day and into the evening.

We all hung out for a bit, talking and having a late breakfast, and then split off into pairs. Blossom and Brick left to go ice skating downtown after she begged him to take her, and about an hour after they had left, Butch and Buttercup left to have lunch and roam the city in his car.

Boomer and I had the entire house to ourselves.

It took some persistent badgering, but after I found a fun recipe in one of our many cookbooks, I convinced Boomer to make it with me.

"I still don't understand why we need to make an entire cake for New Year's," he said to me with a laugh on the drive over to the grocery store. We were on our way there to get some extra ingredients that we didn't have sitting around in the kitchen. He drummed one hand against the steering wheel. "We still have about a million and three of Blossom's cookies left over, and I'm pretty sure those are gonna be stale and gross soon."

I smiled, thinking of the tons and tons of homemade cookies that littered our kitchen countertops. "True," I said. "But I just wanted to make something special for New Year's. Everyone might want some of it when they get home, and I thought it would be a nice surprise."

"Surprise, sure," Boomer allowed, making a left hand turn onto the street that the closest grocery store was on. "But by the time school starts back, we're all gonna be about 15 pounds heavier than we were when break started." I laughed.

We arrived, and after Boomer parked we headed into the store, hands held and swinging between our bodies.

We picked a nearby cart, and I climbed inside of it and sat down with my knees up, grinning up unashamed at my boyfriend as he smirked down at me.

Boomer pushed the cart through the individual aisles as I read what ingredients we needed to buy off of a list I'd compiled on my phone. He would hand me the ingredients as he found them on the shelves, and I would carefully set them beside me inside the cart.

After a little while, we had found all of the ingredients we needed, but we continued going down aisles, finding other things to stock the fridge with. I spotted my favorite brand of canned iced coffee and got a package, then saw the raspberry variety, which was Blossoms favorite, and also put it in the basket. As we went down the cereal aisle, Boomer spotted his favorite—Cinnamon Toast Crunch—and picked it out, and then I spotted Buttercup's favorite—Cocoa Puffs—and he handed them to me as well. Boomer picked out some beef jerky for Butch, and then some of Brick's favorite protein bars.

When we came out of our grocery shopping-while-hungry daze, we saw the abundance of food we'd bought and decided to stop right then and there. Pulling up to an empty checkout counter, the cashier gave me a dirty look for sitting in the cart, but he didn't say anything.

Our items were rung up, bagged, and the ludicrous price was paid as well. I finally climbed out of the cart as we loaded the numerous full paper bags into it, and after moving the bags into the backseat of Boomer's Audi, we left back for home.

Loading all of the groceries into their rightful places in the kitchen—or at least places where we could find space—took us awhile, but it was well worth it. We ate a quick lunch and then got to work on the cake.

"Which one? Oldies or Classic Rock?" I called to him from the stereo in the living room, trying to decide on a radio station to blast. I would've picked the Pop station if it were available, but for some reason the reception wasn't picking it up.

"Oldies," he called back.

I turned to the radio station, turned the volume up as high as I thought it needed to be so we could hear it clearly in the kitchen, and the sound of The Supremes blasted through the house.

Jamming to the sounds of yesteryear, we measured ingredients, stirred them together, with a brief flour fight in between, which covered both our clothes in a dusting of white. Finally, we finished all the preparing and poured the end result into two identical round cake pans, putting them into the preheated oven.

Immediately, I went into the broom closet and got the mop out. "We'd better clean this flour off the floor before Blossom gets home and loses it," I told him, and he laughed in agreement.

I mopped as he wiped the counters clean, and then we put all of the pots and pans and measuring cups that we'd used into the sink. By the time we were completely done cleaning, the two layers of cake were done baking. We took them out of the oven to cool.

We sat on top of the counter for a while, side by side, listening to The Beach Boys and lip-syncing the words that we knew. Soon another song came on, and it was a woman who crooned about her lover, wondering if they felt the same way she felt about them, and whether or not their love was an 'eternal flame'. Boomer gently coaxed me off the counter top as he stood, too, and then he wrapped his arms around me, leading me into a slow dance with him.

Smiling and leaning into him, my arms wrapped around his torso like a hug, I closed my eyes.

For a minute or so, we stayed like that, silently swaying to the music. Then Boomer interrupted the quiet. "Don't you think it'll be like this," he started, and I patiently let him continue a few beats later, "When we're older and married and have a place of our own?"

For a moment I stayed where I was, then I looked up, eyes locking with his. He looked almost gravely serious. I felt my heart pound. "Of course it will," I finally answered, my voice soft. "It'll be just like this."

The song we had been dancing to stopped, the DJ made a comment or two, and then 'Fly Me to The Moon' by Frank Sinatra started to play.

Boomer stopped swaying, his expression as serious as ever. He kept his arms around me, and they tightened the slightest bit as he said, "Bubbles, I don't fully understand what's happening to all of us now, and I don't know what's in store for us in the future. I don't even know what tomorrow will be like. Maybe things will be okay. Maybe they won't." He swallowed hard, his eyes probing mine, as if they were searching for something. "The only thing I'm certain of is that I love you. That I'll always love you."

In the view of his vulnerable gaze, and with his vulnerable words, my heart twisted and skipped and raced. It didn't race the way it used to, though. The pace of my heart was slower—the pace of a human's. But with Boomer's words, in his adoring gaze, it paced just a bit quicker—not nearly as fast as it would have months ago, but at a pace that reminded me of what I was: alive. Not what I used to be, but still alive. Blood pumping, thoughts racing, skin pulsing with feeling. Alive.

Slowly, I reached toward his face with a careful hand. I let my fingertips trace the side of his face, my eyes following the movement; his brow, the outline of his cheekbone, the tip of his nose, the curve of his soft lips.

My hand traveled down his chin, brushed against his Adam's apple, my eyes pausing to watch when it bobbed as he swallowed hard. Even slower, my fingers trailed down his chest, then came to a rest above his chest cavity, right where his heart was. In the past, I could have heard his heartbeat just by concentrating. Now I couldn't hear it at all. I faintly felt the drum of it through his sweater. "Boomer," I asked in a quiet voice suddenly, "Could I listen to your heartbeat?"

I looked up to see him nod in a slight daze, his eyes lidded.

Removing my hand, I replaced it with my head, turning and pressing my ear against his chest. His arms tightened around me once again, holding me against him. His heart thrummed against my ear, steady. It wasn't at the pace it used to be, either. It was just slightly faster than mine. It wouldn't be long until it became just as slow as a human's heart. With my ear against him like this, the pounding of his heart echoed in my head, and I could hear the whooshing of air as he breathed in and breathed out. Slightly unsteady. Nervous. My eyes were closed, but I knew if I looked, his whole face would be red.

Human but not quite human. Heart pounding. Blood rushing. Alive. Mine.

"Boomer," I said to him, voice quieter than ever. "Come up to my room."

At the sound of what I'd said, his heart sped up again. Slowly, he pulled back from me. "Bubbles," he started. His voice was uneven and sure enough, his face was flushed. "Are you sure?" He threw one quick glance at our abandoned warm cakes on the counter.

I looked up at him steadily, being 1000% sure of what I was saying to him. "Boomer, I love you." I reached up with both of my hands, holding his face between them. "Take me to my room."

The cakes had already been forgotten. Boomer picked me up as I put my hands on his shoulders, and my legs wrapped around his waist. Carrying me up the stairs as I held his face in my hands again, pressing gentle kisses all over it, he pushed my bedroom door open with his foot and set me down on my bed. He quickly spun to close the door, only pausing a moment before he turned the lock on the doorknob.

Padding back over to my bed, his eyes locked with mine once more as he stood over me. His light hair, wild and tangled, hung like a sheer curtain around his hesitant gaze. Beautiful. Again, he asked me, "Baby, are you sure? I just want to be sure that you're ready."

I nodded. For a moment, I let the gravity of what was about to happen overwhelm me. Then, though my nose, I breathed in, and a calm came over me. And in that moment, I knew I really was ready for this, and I had been for a while.

I reached toward him, tugging his t-shirt up, exposing his stomach to me. I leaned in, pressing my lips indulgently against the tight skin and muscles. Then I moved slightly upward and pressed them there, breathing out as I did, air warm against his skin. Goosebumps rose across his stomach. I moved once more and pressed my lips to his skin again. I spread both of my hands against the small of his back, then curled them inward, letting my nails brush lightly across the skin there.

Boomer took in a shaky breath. " _Bubbles_." The way his voice sounded, deep and hungry, made goosebumps raise on my own skin and a small, flickering flame in the pit of my stomach stirred.

After one last feathery kiss against his stomach, I lifted my gaze to lock with his again. The blue eyes that I loved were dark and desperate with desire. I reached up toward him, needing him against me, and he came down to me, his lips crashing down onto mine. He kissed me deeply, languorously, with a burning behind it that made me realize just how long he'd been wanting this too.

He lifted my thighs with gentle hands, helping me scoot back on my bed, and then turned us over so that my weight was on top of him.

As the sun began to set outside my window on that New Year's Eve, bathing the room in orange, then a twilight blue, and long before anyone else came home, we burned and melted together. Through gasps and touches and a heavy haze that singed through my mind and tightened around my soul with a force that I had never experienced before, we became one.

The year ended in a way I had never previously known, and the brand new year started hours later, opening up and endless in its possibilities.

Little did we know what it would bring to all of us.


	15. Apocalypse Please

**Chapter Fourteen**

**-Unknown POV-**

Pain.

Splitting through my head like lightning, spreading like wildfire. Making every sound unbearable and every shred of light nearly lethal. Making me forget parts of myself.

I did the only thing I'd been able to do when these new, strange, wretched migraines took me at random.

I closed my eyes, laid my head down on my desk, and slept.

* * *

**-Blossom's POV-**

Nearly two full weeks of the New Year had passed.

My sisters, the boys, and I sat in our café after school, enjoying some downtime after the stress of starting a brand new semester. New classes, new professors, and whole new schedules. It had been a relatively harmless week, but adjusting to our new routines had been interesting, that's for sure. Most of us had stopped feeling so draggy all the time—or maybe it was just that we had finally begun to get used to the feeling. In any case, school had been the only thing on our minds for the past weeks.

We were in the middle of a conversation about our new classes, however, when we each got the interruption that none of us had been expecting. One by one, our cell phones beeped, buzzed, and lit up with notifications at the same exact time. Exchanging wary gazes with each other over our coffee mugs and snacks, we each picked up our phones.

And lo and behold, there it was—the first crime notification on our Hotline app since November.

' _Emergency Alert:_ _Mysterious fog across downtown. Must be investigated ASAP._ ' It said.

Shock spread across the table in succession. Buttercup shot up from the booth we were sitting at, gripping her phone tightly in her hand. "Holy shit," she exclaimed loudly, no doubt voicing all of our thoughts at that moment. This caused most of the other quiet customers in the café to turn to look at us, startled and curious.

Butch was the next to stand, a look of wild anticipation on his face. "It's go time."

I had turned immediately to Brick. "Remember the plan?" Next to me, Bubbles had grabbed hold of my sleeve anxiously.

"Right," Brick said to me, standing up next. I stood after him as he turned to the rest of the table. "We need to get to Professor." He dropped his voice quieter so that no onlookers could hear him. "No way we can do this with no powers. We need to get out there as soon as possible."

All of us piled out of the booth, leaving our drinks and food behind. Re-shouldering backpacks and purses, we rushed out of the café.

Immediately, as we left the building, we saw what we were notified for. We looked up—then collectively froze.

A murky, thick pink fog had fallen over the town. If it weren't for the color of it, it would almost seem like a regular foggy day. It was thicker, admittedly, but similar to the fog that we would sometimes get in the spring and late some days late in the summer. Only it was winter. And we never got fog in the winter. And because of the color itself, I knew that it couldn't possibly be a product of nature.

Then, after standing there for a few moments, looking away from the opaque, rose, smoke-like surrounding wall that shielded the sky and hid the skyscrapers, it hit me. All of us exchanged looks as we realized it at the exact same time.

The streets were empty. The sidewalks were completely clear of pedestrians. There was nobody.

"What the hell?" said Boomer.

Butch echoed his sentiment with another question. "Where is everyone?" Next to him, Buttercup was staring out in disbelief, searching around with her eyes as if the crowds of pedestrians would reappear any second.

Instead of answering his brother's question, Brick asked another one. "Do you hear that?" My heart skipped a beat at his tone—chilled, disturbed. It was exactly how I felt. I nodded at his question, unable to answer.

Bubbles answered him. "There's nothing," she said. "There are no noises out here."

No chirping birds. No traffic noises. No talking people. Just complete and utter penetrating silence. The streets of downtown, aside from the all-encompassing pastel pink fog, had been completely abandoned. The scene felt eerily familiar.

We had only been in our café for 30 minutes. Everything had been completely normal when we'd gotten there earlier. What was happening?

Mind suddenly racing, I yanked out my cell phone from the pocket of my pea coat. I went straight to my contacts, selected the one I needed, and the held it to my ear. It rang once. Twice. Three times.

To my great relief, he answered on the third ring. "Sweetheart, is everything okay? Do you need me?" Professor.

"Yes," I breathed out. I locked eyes with Brick just as he realized who I was calling. "How fast can you come downtown? It's an emergency." I paused as he answered. "Good. Bring the emergency shots with you." After telling him where we were, I hung up, and everyone was staring at me now.

Surprised, Buttercup said, "I thought we were going to meet him at our house. You asked him to come here?"

I nodded, eyes scrutinizing our surroundings even though I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary besides the fog and the stillness. "There's no time to drive all the way there and then come all the way back down here. It wouldn't make any sense. It would waste time."

"But what if something happens before he gets here? How will we protect the people inside the buildings?" Bubbles asked me, her voice high pitched with worry.

My stomach twisted, a little uneasy myself. "Let's just hope Professor gets here fast," I said.

There was a pause, everyone feeling uncomfortable. Then Butch said lightly, shrugging and breaking the tense silence, "At least there's no traffic."

There was a mixture of nervous chuckles and groans from the rest of us.

We all remained standing in our coats and scarves and gloves, on guard and keeping our attention on our surroundings, even though nothing was happening except for the unsettling quiet that stretched on and on.

Finally, breaking through the wall of murky pink silence, Professor's white car drove cautiously down the road towards us, both sets of headlights on even though it was technically still afternoon. He came to a stop next to the curb we were standing at, and then he stopped the car, pulled a black suitcase out of the passenger seat, and got out of the car. He looked as nervous as the rest of us, possibly even more. "What's going on out here?" He asked as he approached. "Where did all of this fog come from?"

"That's what we need to find out," Boomer said grimly.

I began to take off my coat despite the biting cold, and Professor turned to me and asked me, "Where should we go? Maybe back inside the café?"

I shook my head. "There's people inside. Too risky. Besides, there's no time. Let's just do this now." The stillness was beginning to worry me. It felt like something might happen soon, and I didn't want to have no powers when it did. As I turned to hand Brick my coat, my bare arms frigid in the air, I looked back at the café we had emerged from minutes ago. Faces of the humans inside greeted me from the window, faces of numerous colors and shapes. They all looked out at us and at the surrounding fog, vulnerable, terrified and confused. We had to do this. For all of them. And for us, too. I turned away, saying to everyone, "I'll go first."

Professor gave me a quick, unsure look, looking around at the weird fog, then he unlocked the black suitcase. Opening it, he kneeled and set it on the sidewalk. He crooked a finger, gesturing for me to kneel down with him. Struggling slightly in my black tights, I kneeled down on the cold concrete.

I looked back up at my teammates, offering a reassuring smile at their worried expressions. This would be the very first test of the emergency shots since Professor had finally finished them just days ago. It was the moment of truth. "Wish me luck," I said to all of them half-jokingly. No one laughed.

"How long will it last?" Brick asked my father.

Professor shook his head. "I don't know how long, exactly. It should depend on how quickly it'll take for you to burn through it." He took out the first syringe, extra thick than the other ones had been, and the Chemical X inside it seemed to have a negative, black light reverse-glow to it, and it hurt my eyes to look at it. Everyone else was squinting to look at it, too, and I knew I wasn't the only one. After quickly wiping an alcohol towelette across it, he took my arm in a gentle hand, then poised the needle pointing at my inner elbow. Softly, he said, "You might feel a strange sensation."

I nodded quickly, gritting my teeth together in anticipation. "Okay," I said.

The needle went into my arm. Professor pushed the syringe, and I immediately _felt_ the liquid flowing into me—it felt like liquid warmth. Then it began tingling, pushing through my bloodstream.

The tingling grew stronger, stronger still, until it felt like all of my veins had bubbling inside of them. It began to burn. Then it scalded. I felt my limbs shaking involuntarily. The shaking turned to violent thrashing. Rushing began in my ears, blocking out my hearing. My vision split into two. I squeezed my eyes shut.

I heard distant shouting, and a firm grip on both of my shoulders, and on my arms, then my hands, multiple hands holding me in place.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed with the hands gripping me—minutes, or maybe it was only seconds. The burning in my veins soon turned to pure energy, and the rushing in my ears stopped. I opened my eyes.

I was now lying on the cold concrete. I was surrounded by the faces of my teammates and Professor, all of their eyes fearful and wary. The entire world around me had been thrown into 1000% concentration—every color was brighter, every sound was loud, and everything was a thousand times sharper. The sound of my own breathing was even loud in my ears. Sitting up slowly, my head swimming dizzily, I broke away from their hands, where they had all been holding onto me tightly.

"Blossom?" Brick's voice came from right next to me, booming, even though he was just speaking at what probably felt to him like a normal volume. I cringed. "Are you all right?"

My heart was racing, galloping, like I had just consumed a crazy amount of caffeine. The dizziness had begun to fade the slightest bit, and I made to stand up. Everyone backed away, giving me room. I stood, finding that my limbs sure and strong as I did. I looked down at my feet, then at my hands. I stretched my arms above my head, flexing the muscles. All the muscles in my body had a pleasant glowing warmth to them now.

"Blossom?" Brick repeated, sounding anxious.

I turned to him, feeling the faint beginnings of a smile on my face. "I think I'm more than all right," I told him. "Let me try something."

I walked forward, moving past Bubbles and out of the circle of my teammates. I faced the endless stretch of pink fog in the sky. _Here goes nothing_ , I thought. Concentrating hard, I willed the heat to build in my head. It built and built, then it moved to the backs of my eyes, and then in a way it hadn't for a long time—too long—the heat exploded out of my eyes, throwing concentrated red lasers into the air.

A mighty shout of exhilaration came from me, and then it came from the entire group behind me. I whirled, facing them all, overjoyed. They returned my joy with theirs, seven beaming faces in all. Professor in particular looked relieved.

Buttercup ran to Professor, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug. "You did it, Professor!" Immediately, she let go of him, peeling off her coat and throwing it on the ground. She shoved her sleeve up. "Me next!"

Professor, kneeling once again, gave Buttercup her shot next. Within seconds, I saw the same effects take over her the way they took over me—the uncontrollably shaking limbs, cringing away from a noise only she could hear, and something else: her eyes began blowing a bright neon green from within. _That_ was what had happened with my vision. They'd been glowing pink. From this perspective, it really did look scary. No wonder they'd all freaked out. Butch held onto her tightly so she wouldn't fall onto the concrete like I had.

As if unable to help it with all the joy and excitement I was feeling, my feet began to lift off of the ground, and I did a little levitating air twirl, my hair spinning around me. My heart squeezed with happiness. I'd missed flying so much. I did floating flip, pulling my knees into my body, flipping my feet over my head, turning the world upside down, then finishing the turn and returning right side up again.

Brick was watching me next to Boomer with his arms folded, grinning. "Now she's just showing off."

"It's working," Bubbles commented, eyeing me with a good natured look on her face. "I'm already jealous." As my feet gently connected back with the ground, I felt a big, goofy smile on my face.

Between Professor and Butch, Buttercup began to come out of her rush, blinking blearily at everything and looking dazed. "Whoa," she said.

Remembering the important emergency at hand, I snapped out of my joyful stupor, getting back into leader mode once again. I walked back over and knelt down next to Professor, picking up the suitcase of carefully aligned syringes. "I'll help so we can get this done faster. Who's next?"

Even though I had technically never given someone a shot before, and I accidentally pricked Boomer with the needle twice more than was necessary, which earned me a withering look from Bubbles, I was familiar enough with the process to manage to help give the rest of the team their emergency shots. Four more twitching, burning shot sessions later, all of us were prepared and in full superhero readiness.

Brick and I sent Professor off, telling him to drive safely and to be careful. After he drove away, fog lights on, white car disappearing back into the smoke, we turned back to face our team.

The tense atmosphere quickly resumed as we got to the task at hand. We left coats, scarves, gloves and bags in one big pile on the sidewalk right next to the coffee house. Then, as one, all six of us cautiously lifted into the air and into the murky pink encasing the sky.

From the inside, it was just as thick, and at this height, the road we had been standing in was hardly visible anymore. My humanized eyes would've had trouble seeing through it at all at my teammates, if it weren't for the supercharged Chemical X shot flowing through my veins. I could still see their silhouettes. I was grateful that my super vision was back.

"Girls," I called out, just to make sure. "Boys. Everyone's up here?"

Everyone answered me in confirmation—except for Buttercup, who called out instead, "This fog is pissing me off."

"It's like trying to see through cotton candy," Bubbles bemoaned. "I can't even see the sky."

Brick, who was right next to me, said in a grim voice, "Come to think of it, it seems a little familiar," then he turned to me and finished, looking at me meaningfully and raising his eyebrows, "don't you think?"

I looked at him, reading into his meaning and said, under my breath but still loud enough for everyone else to hear, "You don't think it's…" I trailed off.

Proving that everyone else could hear us, Butch said, "Couldn't be." He was seven feet away, but it sounded as if he had been right next to me. I had to admit, regaining my better hearing for a little bit again was nice. "It's been so many years."

Boomer was nodding in agreement. "For all we know, he's gone."

As all of us stared out at the murky emptiness around us, silence stretched on. It felt like we were waiting for something, but what were we waiting for, exactly?

Moments later, we had our answer.

The atmosphere shifted.

All of us felt it—it was like a huge drop in temperature and the pressure in the surrounding air changing all at once. My ears popped like they would if I'd gone up miles higher into the air. All the hairs on my body stood on end. The breath from my body turned to wispy clouds when I exhaled. I shifted, on edge. Something was coming. Something unearthly.

And before any of us could speak up about it, a voice that had not greeted us for quite some time echoed, pulsed and rolled around us.

"A few years of vacation and it's like my own boys don't believe I exist anymore." High pitched and airy, as if the speaker didn't have a worry in the world, with a reverberating echo encasing it—it sounded as if the voice spoke into and through multiple dimensions at the same time.

A voice that all of us would recognize anywhere and anytime. Even if it had been years since any of us had heard the slightest peep from Him.

A moment of heavy, shocked silence pushed through all of us, all of us staring at each other, wondering if we had imagined what had just happened. Then, all at once, we turned around and around, necks craning, eyes searching for the owner of the voice. The fog around us, aside from the quiet, dark skyscrapers, was empty. He was nowhere in sight.

Brick was the one to speak into the echoing ether first. "We're not your boys, Him," his voice was steely and authoritative. "And we're not boys anymore. We're grown up now. We're different."

A light, flitting laugh that swayed back and forth around us. "Stepsons, boys, men, whatever you want to call yourselves. It makes no difference to me." The tone of the voice changed slightly. It had an edge to it. "But let's not act like my bringing you back to life didn't happen. You belong to me just as much as you belong to Mojo. That is a fact."

When Butch responded with a sudden, explosion of a shout, his rage was untethered. "We belong to _no one!"_ His green eyes searched the surrounding air, face wild and menacing.

A mocking sigh that whispered past all of us like ghostly fingers. "Honestly, boys, this is a bit of a letdown. I was expecting much more of a warm welcome. Haven't you missed me at all? And girls, I haven't even heard from you yet. Aren't you happy that I've returned?"

I'd been watching all of this unfold, frozen in shock. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Him had returned. Why now? Of all times, why now? "What are you doing, Him? Why have you returned? What do you want from us?"

He tutted. "Now, now. Why the suspicion? Can't I just drop in once in a while?" Him paused. "By the way, I see you've gotten your powers back. Through unusual methods, admittedly. Seems rather flimsy to me." A slow, smug chuckle, deeper than the laugh from before. It rumbled inside of me like a bass guitar turned all the way up.

He'd known that we'd had a total loss of our powers. But how? As far as the public had known, me and my sisters were struggling with them. Also as far as they knew, the boys still had their powers. How had Him known about this?

This time, Buttercup was the one to explode. "Just tell us what you want!" With a growl of frustration, she let loose a beam of scalding laser from her eyes. It sailed through, failing to connect with anything.

I held a hand out to stop her from doing it again, even though she was feet away. "Buttercup, don't get riled up yet. You know that's what he wants."

Uproarious laughter now, booming around us like thunder. "Oh, boo." Him mocked.

Boomer was the next one to shout out. "Why are you hiding? Just come out and face us, you coward!"

Another sigh. "Ah, I suppose being invisible has indeed lost its element of surprise. As you wish."

A sudden whirlwind started, winds whipping around us like tight cyclones, stirring the fog into giant, solid walls of pink nothing, casting all of my teammates into barely decipherable silhouettes. I shielded my eyes with one of my hands, squinting. I felt my ponytail whipping behind me, tossing all around my face and arms. Through the haze, I groped blindly for Brick's hand. His hand caught mine, and we held on tight.

Finally, the winds began to settle, and I dropped my hand, opening my eyes up again, my other hand still grasping Brick's. We glanced at each other, frowning, and then at our re-emerging fellow teammates, who looked just as bewildered as us. Silent, all of us turned circles in the air, searching the surrounding empty void.

Then, through the silence, we heard the echoing click of high heels.

The thickness of the fog made it impossible to sense the direction the sound came from, but soon a figure emerged directly behind us—walking through the fog, heels clicking on nothing, as if he was on solid ground instead of levitating mid-air like the rest of us. Tall—impossibly tall, slender arms with sharp lobster-like claws at the ends, thigh high stiletto boots and tight leather pants on shapely legs, and a sleek leather jacket to match, zipped up with seemingly nothing underneath it. Skin the color of shimmering rubies, pointed ears, smug, smirking lips painted black, a small sharp, angular black goatee on his chin, angular black eyebrows, and likewise, ink black hair slicked back smoothly against his scalp. And lastly, the irises in his eyes—ageless voids of black.

Him, for the first time in years, standing right before us.

He smiled—it was slow, predatory, revealing unnaturally white sharp teeth. "Boys. Girls. How do you do?" He politely held a claw out in front of him, as if to shake hands with us. When no one moved, he brought his claw back, shaking his head and raising his neat eyebrows with a look of mocking surprise on his face. "No handshakes, then?" The leer was still on his lips.

Shaking past my initial frozen shock at seeing Him again for the first time in so long, I levitated forward, arms folded. Him watched my approach, amused. When I spoke, my voice was steely. "Why are you here, Him? Really?"

Him sighed, a long, leisurely, bored sounding release of air. "Since you insist on knowing, fine." Nonchalant, he stretched out his arm to examine his claw, as if he was wondering if he should sharpen it later. "I have only come to warn you."

"Warn us?" Brick echoed, squinting at his former mentor. "Warn us about what?"

Him hummed, raising an eyebrow. "All of you are in quite a mess. At this point I could warn you about any number of things, really."

"Choose one," Butch challenged him, arms folded impassively.

The villain was still for a moment, pondering over something. "Very well." Then, as he spoke, Him spun in a neat, complete circle, his high heels staying perfectly aligned with the invisible ground, and as we watched, his head stayed straight forward, his eyes locked on us, as his body turned a complete circle. Something that should've been physically impossible. So quietly disturbing. So Him. "You will receive just this one warning from me, a warning in the form of a rhyme, and that is all. So listen to me very carefully. Frankly, even one warning is more than you deserve. But I'm feeling charitable today." His body now faced forward with his head, giving his body normal alignment once more.

"Out with it, already," Buttercup barked at him, glowering. Her jaw clenched. "We don't have all day. Either tell us or don't tell us. It's no skin off our noses."

The villain took one long sweeping look at all of us, taking a moment to look each of us in the eye carefully. Finally, he spoke his riddle slowly. "Your time has been boundless, the use of your time has been devout. But heed my warning, my young, foolish adversaries: Your time is running out."

The six of us stared at Him as he stared back, and then we stared at each other, suspicious and perplexed.

Finally, I was the one to respond. "What's that supposed to mean?" The question was guarded.

Him turned his gaze to me, smug. "You're smart, Blossom." He lifted higher into the air, reclining back into the air with his arms folded behind his head like he was in a reclining chair. The pink fog around him formed to his leather-clad body like a cloudy piece of furniture. "Figure it out."

Frowning, I turned to look at Brick. His gaze turned downward, he was straight faced with concentration. I could tell he was trying to decode his words, just as I was.

Just as before, it sounded as if he'd seen us using the emergency shots. But how were we to know if this was a genuine warning, or just another trick? And why would Him want to warn us about anything, anyway? Why would he ever try to help us?

I felt the others reach the same conclusion I did, and Bubbles was the one to voice it. "You're lying," she said, shaking her head at Him. "You don't want to help us. You're lying to us just to freak us out."

A beat passed as the villain gazed at her, straight faced, and then the biggest leer spread across his face, white on black on red. "Am I?"

Exasperation and frustration passed through the group at the same time. He'd really had us going for a moment there. I pursed my lips, folding my arms and shaking my head. "Joke's on us," I muttered. Him laughed twice, loudly. It echoed like another boom of thunder in the strange pink clouds that surrounded us.

Next to me, my boyfriend was seething. "Do us all a favor, Him. Take your stupid fog and your riddles and get lost. You're just wasting our time."

Him kept laughing, his laughter growing louder and louder.

With a shout of fury, Buttercup burst forward, soaring toward him with her hands outstretched, making to grab him. Just as her hands were about to close in on him, he disappeared into thin air. Her arms closed around nothing, and she blinked at the empty space in front of her in surprise. His loud, screeching laughter kept echoing around us, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, he reappeared behind Brick and I. We turned and both launched toward him, but as soon as we moved, he poofed into nothing again. We collided in the empty air instead.

Immediately, he appeared behind Boomer, cackling hysterically. As soon as Boomer spun around, he was gone. Then, as quick as he had disappeared, he reappeared once again—or more accurately, six of him appeared. Him and five Him Clones swirled around each of us, disappearing and then repoofing in different spots in succession, a chaotic blur of red, six different cackles growing and building together like a demented symphony.

My teammates and I found ourselves backing into each other in one tight spot, back to back as the six Hims closed in and surrounded us in a circle, laughing and cackling away. Then abruptly, ominously, all six of them stopped, sobering and staring down at us in unsettling silence with empty black eyes.

Before any of us could react, Him and the five Him clones disappeared from in front of us one last time. But immediately, Him's singular high-pitched, echoing voice erupted in the space surrounding us once again. "I say, this has gotten to be a bit predictable and dull for my tastes." He paused with a low, slow chuckle completely unlike the other laughter—his voice transformed, becoming sinister, larger than life, Earth-shaking deep in tone and making the air shudder with its' bass. "Let's make this a bit more fun."

The entire area began to shake—it was literally shaking, like the strongest earthquake I had ever witnessed—and suddenly, through the fog, the ground dropped away completely.

All six of us stared down below our feet in disbelief. The asphalt streets and sidewalks far down below had completely disappeared. All that was left was milky opaque pink smoke, curling through seemingly endless empty space, the bottoms of the surrounding skyscraper buildings seeming to stretch down onward to an infinite black void. It was disorientating, and impossible.

Just as I had looked away from the never ending void under our feet, the shaking quelled—and around us, the tall, empty, dark skyscrapers began to move. Swayed, at first. Then it intensified—they began to dip and swerve, careen and retreat around us. Instead of buildings, they had become giant pendulums, swinging through free space like they weren't connected to anything at all, least of all the once-present ground. We flew and scrambled out of the way as some of them began to close in on us.

It was as if the cityscape had become a giant, nightmarish obstacle course.

The swinging became more violent, then the giant pillars began to _bend_ at will—as if they were made of wet clay. They began to thrash, coming at me and my teammates, crashing and bending toward each of us like towering rubber trees. I began to lose track of each of them in the fog, which was denser than ever now, and could only see shadowy shapes flying and voices shouting.

The moment I saw it coming barreling at me, parting the pink smoke in front of me like the sea, one of the massive pillars that used to be a building swung straight at me, the size of it making it impossible for me to leap out of the way. It connected and crashed into my body, throwing me backwards, spiraling through the thick pink clouds until a pair of arms caught me, stopping my free-falling.

A soft grunt sounded as our bodies crashed into one another. It was Bubbles. "Are you okay?" She asked me anxiously, hands gripping my arms and shoulders. "That thing hit you really hard!"

I breathed out, grateful for her catch. "Yeah, fine. It caught me off guard." I scowled at our surroundings. "I hate this fog."

My blonde sister nodded, glaring at the fog too. "It feels like he's cheating." A laugh echoed around us, alerting us to the fact that Him was indeed listening, wherever he was in this accursed fog.

" _Head's up!_ " Came the cry of our third sister from behind us, along with the sound of rushing wind.

I grabbed Bubbles' arm, flying us both several feet to our right and hoping that it was enough. Seconds later, Buttercup blasted past us, a giant black pendulum swinging after her. In two blinks, Butch came seemingly out of nowhere, bursting right through the middle of the pillar, making it crack into pieces. The shattered pieces of it sailed down to the endless ether below, growing smaller and smaller until it was too far to see it.

_Brick_ , I thought. Where did he go?

"Brick!" I called aloud, searching the surrounding fog for a shadow shape that might look like him.

"Hold on!" The response had come from several feet away, so far that he almost sounded blocks away. "Keep talking!"

"I'm right here," I called again. "Where are you?"

"Almost there!" He sounded closer. I still couldn't see any sign of him, though.

"Where?" I shouted.

"Here!" Brick said from behind me. I spun around, and my jaw dropped. Heaved up high above his head, in both hands, he held one of the pillars, so giant and heavy and long that it made him like an ant. I gaped. I knew that we'd gotten our super strength back, but still...how was it possible that he was lifting that entire thing above his head? "Stand back," was all the warning he gave, and then he let it slip from his grasp. Long and whole, it began to fall down into the void.

"Brick, what the hell are you doing?" I told him, nearly hysterical with disbelief. "That's a skyscraper. There could still be people inside! We have to catch it! We have to save them!"

"Hey, hey!" My boyfriend levitated in front of me, blocking me from flying down after them. He grabbed my wrists, looking me right in the face. "Blossom, calm down. They aren't real."

I stared at him, uncomprehending. "What?"

"The pillars aren't actually the buildings from before. They're an illusion. They're fake."

I turned my eyes back down to the pillar, which was still falling through the empty void. And slowly, I realized I couldn't hear the screams of any would-be victims inside. And when Butch had burst through the other pillar, nothing came out of it. He was right. There were no people inside them.

Seeing me catch on, raising his voice, Brick shouted, "You hear that, Him? We saw through your trick. Nice try."

The laugh again, echoing and surrounding us. The light, airy voice. "Very clever. You caught on fast." Him's voice took a sinister turn once again. "But let's see how you squirm your way out of this trick."

Before any of us could comment, or even retort, the noise rose up and boomed, overtaking any thoughts I had in my head. An ungodly screech so mighty and all-encompassing that it made my blood run cold. And from the endless void below, they came soaring up toward us all.

Tentacles.

Where the pillars had been before, they were gone. And replacing them were ink black, massive, endless tentacles rising up from seemingly nowhere, with no owner to be seen.

A tentacle shot out with impossible speed, coming straight at Bubbles, swallowing her up inside its' length before any of us could react. It wrapped around her and dragged her away as she screamed.

I turned to the direction she had disappeared to, not even hesitating to speed after her. I sailed through the fog that she had gone through, following the sound of her scream, and hearing Brick shout my name. I paused only for a moment, thinking that I should go back and see if he was in danger—and that was my mistake. In that split second that I stopped, a tentacle came straight for me.

It wrapped around one of my ankles like a whip, reared back, then flung me further into the endless fog. It whistled past me, along with the ungodly roar once more emanating from below, and in the distance, hysterical laughter.

My arms and legs pinwheeled, trying to find purchase on the air around me to stop, and finally I came to a halt, hearing another noise rushing toward me. All of the spinning had disoriented me once again, and I couldn't tell where the noise was coming from—but when Boomer came barreling through the space directly in front of me, holding hands with Bubbles as they flew from a massive group of tentacles that stretched after them, I flung myself backwards to avoid getting hit or grabbed.

I spun and flew in the opposite direction that the group of tentacles had gone after Boomer and Bubbles. Turning to where I thought I might have come from originally, I shouted, "Brick!" Deciding to take my chances, I took off flying in the direction I faced. "Brick?"

Right in my path, the fog parted to reveal Buttercup unleashing rays from her eyes, slicing the tentacle chasing her in half as the great invisible monster below shrieked in agony. As I passed her, I held my hand up for a high five. Smug, she met me halfway and slapped me five before I soared away, continuing my search for where Brick had gone so that we could fight together.

I had been searching and calling for him, dodging tentacles and searing them with lasers, when it snatched me from the air.

Another tentacle, and larger than so many of the other ones. It wrapped around both of my legs tightly, crushingly, making it impossible for me to wiggle out of its' grip. It flung me back and both, rattled me as I shouted in strain.

For a moment, it slowed down, and I stole my chance. Bending at the waist, I aimed searing rays from my eyes at the tentacle, singeing it directly in the middle. I watched the burning meat of the limb split apart before my eyes, and as it gave one last rattle, the tentacle ripped and detached, the section wrapped around me completely separating from the rest of it.

From the momentum of its' shaking, though, completely wrapped up inside the severed tentacle, I barreled down towards the empty void, falling out of the sky.

Struggling to get my legs free from the tentacle as I built more and more speed, tumbling further and further, I grit my teeth, thrashing. Trying as I might, the damned thing wouldn't let me free. During the struggle, my hair had come free from my ponytail, and long locks of red coiled and whipped around me, blocking my vision and falling after me through the mist like a cape.

The air soaring past me, before I could turn to right myself so that I'd at least be right side up, my back smashed into the black pavement below. Wait. What? The pavement?

It disoriented me, and confused me—I had seen the ground disappear with my own eyes, hadn't I? It hadn't even existed. But just immediately as I landed, it reappeared again, catching me in its' crushing, solid embrace. I felt it crack and crunch apart around me, fragile sediment collapsing against my newly strong again body.

Despite my body's ability to withstand it, I hadn't taken a blow like that in quite some time. It knocked the wind out of me something fierce, and once I could catch my breath, I cried out.

Above me, far above me, there was no sight of tentacles or the shadows of my fighting teammates—just a solid pink wall, and the distant roar of the invisible Kraken.

The impact had caused the severed tentacle around my legs to snap off of me like a rubber band, and my feet were finally free. Taking a moment to recover, breathing in and out, I then scrambled free of the rubble, letting out a cough. Brushing tiny crumbles of black pavement off my sweater, I turned over on the ground, starting to stand back up. As I stood, taking a glance just feet away at the window of the café we had been sitting in but 45 minutes earlier, I froze.

Where I had once seen the faces of all the frightened humans inside, there were only skeletons. Distorted, wrong-looking skulls. Empty eye holes staring through the glass at me, completely unmoving. I stared in disbelief.

I blinked hard, blinked again, then looked at the window once more. The skeletons remained.

I shook my head. No. That couldn't be right. That wasn't possible. They were alive. All of them were. They had been. What had happened to them? I began to back away, my eyes locked on the window.

Obviously the pillars had been an illusion. The ground disappearing had been an illusion, too. I was standing on it with my own two feet. And the tentacles had to be an illusion too, because if they weren't, the monster would've had to be down here somewhere. There was no monster to be seen. Just disembodied tentacles. Just another illusion.

These skeletons had to be an illusion, too—but I wasn't sure. If Him was in the clouds, how could he possibly make illusions down here, too? It was hard for me to truly know what was an illusion and what wasn't.

That was what I hated about the red devil so much. I never knew what about Him was real or not real. He always made me question my own mind.

I closed my eyes, breathing deeply. In, out. In, out. Now was not the time to fall victim to Him's tricks. I couldn't let him get to me. I had to go back.

One more deep breath in, and then I squatted and launched myself back into the air, bracing myself for the reentry into the dense pink miasma. I broke through it, and the sounds of battle surrounded me.

My teammates had all taken Buttercup's cue of using their lasers on the tentacles, and red beams were flying, connecting, searing. I watched as Butch tore through a tentacle with his bare hands—and then I turned to watch as simultaneously, Bubbles twirled past me in a dizzying flight formation, keeping the two tentacles that pursued her completely unable to grab hold of her. She and Butch both disappeared into the fog once again.

A high-pitched, maniacal laugh rang out. "Heat rays, fancy flying tricks. Go on ahead, you bumbling fools. Use all your useless tricks. You won't be able to for long!" A laugh again, so shrill and hysterical that it sounded closer to a scream.

All I saw of my teammates were blurring shapes and red beams. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I shouted as loud as possible, "All of you, listen to me. There is no monster! The tentacles don't belong to anything. It's another illusion!"

Brick flew up beside me, materializing out of the fog to my right. I didn't jump in surprise, since I'd expected him to show up first. "Really? How do you know?"

I pointed underneath our feet. "I fell. Down to the ground." At his look of surprise, I nodded slowly. "Another illusion. It's still there."

Appearing from nowhere, Buttercup was suddenly next to us, staring at me severely. "Wait. Are you forreal? There's no monster down there?"

Folding my arms, I nodded. "Yep. Just disembodied tentacles." I opened my mouth to say something else, but something in the air had shifted, and it silenced me.

All of a sudden, there was only stillness. Things had abruptly become quiet—too quiet. All three of us had immediately sensed it. We turned our gazes outward, looking around us, on guard.

The tentacles had disappeared.

"Where'd they go?" Brick was the one to voice the question. His voice was low and cautious.

There was movement through the fog—nonthreatening, calm. Our other three teammates found us at the same time, each emerging through the mist around us with confusion on their faces. They'd heard what Brick had said.

"No kidding. One second I was tangled up in one, the next it didn't exist," Butch said, looking irritated, his arms folded. "Where'd they go off to?" Boomer, who was next to him, nodded in agreement, brow furrowed.

"What's happening now?" Bubbles asked all of us in general, a wary expression on her face.

Him's voice came up again, joining in the conversation as if he had been standing right next to us. His voice surrounded where we were standing, but he himself was still maddeningly invisible to the eye. "The correct question isn't where they went," he paused, tone smug. "The better question would be what they've turned into."

Buttercup groaned, then responded, her voice escalating to a shout, "I'm getting real tired of this."

"Don't worry," the villain immediately replied with a mocking, echoing whisper. "It'll all be over soon."

One beat of deceitful silence.

Then, in one dizzying, eruption of movement, giant shadowy shapes came, clamping around each of us, ripping us from the sky and dragging us down through the ether as if they'd come to drag us down into hell.

They had come so soundlessly that by the time they had snatched us in their giant, iron grip, it was too late to escape. As I looked down at myself, however, and I saw the big shape of a thumb wrapped around me along with four more fingers, I realized what the shapes that had grabbed us were— _hands._ Giant hands, attached to long, endless arms, pitch black and dragging us down and down as all six of us shouted in astonishment, struggling to get free as we fell.

Then, one by one, each of us was chucked against the black concrete of the street below by the shadow hands. Slamming down and crushing into the cement, we left six individual craters.

Unlike the first time I'd fallen, this time I smacked down front first. My face scraped painfully against the concrete, the sharp edges of it making small little tears and cuts in the soft skin. The impact _killed_ , and just like the first one, the brief shock of pain knocked me breathless.

My jaw dropping involuntarily in a silent scream, I took a breath and cried out sharply, pushing myself up and wiping my face with the back of my hand to get out the tiny pieces of grit that had embedded in my skin. I looked down at my hand afterwards to survey the damage, and not only saw the grit that had come out—but also saw tiny stripes of black. I froze, frowning.

Before I had a chance to even think about why that had looked wrong, there was a pair of normal-sized hands grabbing my arms and pulling me up. Without even thinking, I let them pull me off the smashed crumbs of concrete and into the air as we took off.

Seconds after we lifted into the air, one of the giant, solid black hands—balled into the shape of a fist—crushed into the ground exactly where I had been.

I looked at who had pulled me up. Buttercup. I sighed in relief. "Thanks," I said to her.

She smiled at me tersely through her warrior's mask, then as something caught her attention, her eyes widened and she grabbed my hand, shouting, "Come on!"

I only had a chance to briefly glance behind me as we sped away, and I saw approaching us two of the giant hands, palms open and fingers stretched and reaching to grab the both of us from the air again.

As we careened away, hands held, I took a double take at our surroundings. We weren't in the sightless haze anymore. Instead, the fog loomed just above us, and the abandoned cityscape was all we had to avoid the arms-and-hands monster that chased us.

I kept stealing glances back at the monster. Now that we were out of the fog, I had a better look at it—it was made of entirely arms. No head. No feet. Just six shadow hands connected to impossibly long arms that swung after us to grab and then flatten us like pancakes. All six of the arms were connected to each other in the middle, like an asterisk. So disturbing looking, yet weirdly entrancing. I could barely tear my gaze away from it.

Our teammates flew around us, dodging and weaving away from the hands as the giant appendages snatched through the air and smashed a path of destruction after them, crushing sides of abandoned buildings and knocking over traffic lights. Without normal city noises to dull it, the noises of destruction were deafening.

Buttercup and I weaved between buildings and dove under street lights, hoping to slow our pursuers down and lose them. We ducked behind a particularly solid concrete building for a break, touching down in a narrow, dark alleyway next to it, breathing hard.

I turned to face her, my hands on my knees. I knew that normally neither one of us should've been breathing this hard with our powers properly intact, but I did my best to shove my worries away—until I really looked at her. Seeing the strain on her face, and the sweat beading on her forehead, I asked, "Hey, are you okay?" I reached toward her.

She waved me away with a hand. She said between deep breaths, "I'm fine, don't worry." She wasn't just sweaty, she looked clammy.

My worry spiked. I stared at her. "You're sweating."

Her face pinching with annoyance now, she glared at me. "I'm _fine_."

A scream rang out. It was Bubbles. Impending argument immediately forgotten, our eyes wide, the both of us exploded into the air, speeding toward the direction her scream had come from.

Quickly, we found her on the block with the café we had been at earlier, being unrelentingly clutched in the fist of one of the giant hands, crying out in pain.

Careening towards the arm top speed, I kicked the limb with my outstretched leg. The next second, Buttercup came at it from the other direction, aiming another flying kick at it. There was a snapping sound. With a jerk, the hand opened, releasing Bubbles. I caught her in my hands as she limply fell from its' grasp.

"Bubbles!" I said, urgency in my tone. She was droopy in my arms.

She was wincing, trying lightly to push out of my grasp. "I'm okay." Despite what she'd said, she hissed in through her teeth as she straightened. She was hurt.

"Buttercup, she's hurt," I said over my shoulder without looking at our other sister. When I didn't hear a reply, I repeated, "Buttercup?"

Instead of her reply, there was the sound of a crash against the ground beneath us, along with the distinct noise of concrete breaking apart once again.

I wasn't sure if it was my instincts, or just the adrenaline from the battle, but immediately, I knew something was wrong. I swiveled around, looking to where Buttercup had been levitating just moments before. She wasn't there.

Bubbles grasped my arm tightly, her voice full of panic. " _Blossom!_ " I looked at her, she was looking beneath us. I turned my eyes to the ground.

Buttercup was there, in a giant crater in the sidewalk below.

The two of us flew down to Buttercup's aid. She had crashed down into the sidewalk—she hadn't been thrown, either. She'd fallen. There were no other giant hands around, aside from the one we had kicked, which was now eerily still, suspended in the air. We landed on either side of her. She was sitting up—thankfully not passed out—looking down at the sidewalk she was sitting on in bewilderment, confusion and fear. Sweat drenched her forehead. My hands fluttered over her, shaking, unsure in this frenzied moment what I could even do.

The shot couldn't have been wearing off. Not already. Not so soon. Not when we still had a battle to fight.

"Butch!" I called out, panic making my voice shoot up a few octaves. "Boomer! Brick!"

Butch had flown over to us faster than I could blink, landing with both feet so hard on the street that a gust of air blew past us. He fell on his knees on the ground in front of her, staring at her with fierce uneasiness. "What happened?" He demanded, his face drained. I shook my head, unable to answer him. A lump had risen in my throat. Buttercup didn't say anything either, just stared at him miserably.

The shots were indeed wearing off, and quicker than we'd hoped. She couldn't fly once again. Which probably meant that within minutes, Bubbles and I wouldn't be able to either, and then the boys soon following.

Game over.

His brothers landed nearby seconds later. They walked over, both looking down at Buttercup with identical looks of wariness, already having figured it out.

I looked above us. The long, unnatural arm had disappeared. All of them had. They had gone as quietly as they had come.

Finally, in the silence, he returned. Him appeared just feet over us in the air, unfolding into existence right above us as if he had been there the whole time. The pink fog still formed to his body, cradling it and surrounding it.

He was levitating as he had been before, except in a sitting position this time—his legs were crossed at the knee as if he were relaxing in a comfortable chair, the stiletto heels of his boots pointed down toward us like knives. His claws were folded underneath his arms. Him took a long, even look at Buttercup on the ground, painted black lips pursed, not saying anything. We stared back at him, tense. Bubbles cradled Buttercup against her protectively as I kneeled between them and Him, arms spread.

Then he spoke, echoing voice calm and subdued. "It's like I said, children. You couldn't have expected to be limitless for long." Behind the laughter in his expression, there was a certain cruelty and contempt in his eyes as he stared down at us, and it felt more familiar than anything else. "Time is not on your side. And it looks like your time is up."

For a moment, quietness throbbed from all of us, for once none of us having a sharp retort or argument, because with Buttercup on the ground, flying powers faded once again, he'd hit a nerve.

I still couldn't shake the strangest, distinct feeling that something else about his words rang true. He must have seen us using the emergency shots, that was obvious at this point. So that was what he was talking about. He'd somehow known that our powers weren't working, and that the emergency shots were temporary. That was why what he was saying sounded true. That was the only reason why.

Wasn't it?

The pink fog curled around Him, folding him inside of it, and with one last smirk at all of us, unblinking black eyes locked on us until the very last second, the vapor swallowed him up, curled in on itself like water going down a drain, and then vanished completely.

As soon as he was gone, like a light switch being flipped, everything instantly changed.

I blinked. All of the fog was gone. The sun was shining in the cold winter sky. The damaged parts of buildings and streets and sidewalks were back to normal, all repaired. The bustling city returned, along with the city noises and city traffic on the streets. Skeletons in the window of the café turned back to very human faces of excitement, fear, amazement, along with even smartphones recording us.

Everything was back to normal. And with it, the tense and uneasy atmosphere had completely gone away.

As me and my teammates looked around us in bewilderment at the sudden, disorienting normalcy, there was a loaded pause as everybody came to the same realization at the same time.

Butch was the one to vocalize it. "He was fucking with us. The whole time, he was just playing with us." His voice shook with barely contained fury.

Brick continued his thought, clenching his eyes shut tightly in anger. "He didn't want an actual fight. It was just a game. And we fell for it so easily."

Frustrated, exhausted, and fed up, we all let these words sink in. Townsville hadn't been in any actual danger. All that effort, all that expended energy for nothing. Solely for Him's entertainment.

It was an experience me and my sisters had not had for years now, but nevertheless, it was all too familiar.

I sighed heavily, looked at my sisters, saw the familiar looks of resigned frustration on their faces, then turned back to the boys. "Well, boys. It looks like you have officially joined the ranks of Him's professional chess pieces."

They responded with rolling eyes, groans and dry laughs. They knew I was right. Bubbles shook her head at me, grinning, and even Buttercup cracked a smirk.

Even as mad as I was, I couldn't help but grin dryly as I finished, "Welcome."

* * *

**-Brick's POV-**

Before the past few months, I had so rarely gone down to Professor's laboratory. It had been completely off-limits to guests like me—well. Save for that one time that the girls had kidnapped Boomer, and Butch and I thought Bubbles _was_ Boomer, but that experience had been so confusing and weird that I kind of blocked most of it from my memory.

But nowadays, it felt like just another place in the Utonium house that I had gotten used to. White, spotless linoleum floors, white walls, white ceiling, white everything, just like the living room upstairs. It also had a clean, calm silence to it, no doubt thanks to sound proofing.

That evening, I watched as Blossom finished telling Professor about what had happened at the end of the battle, with great detail as usual. I had come down here with her to help her explain to Professor what had happened, but she was doing most of the explaining anyhow. Professor took it all in, nodding solemnly with a look in his eyes that didn't look exactly encouraging.

"Thank you for coming here to tell me all of this." Professor said once she finished, rubbing his chin with his hand. "I had known that the shot would only last for a little while, but the manner that it faded is concerning. How are you feeling?"

Blossom shrugged. "I feel fine."

"No headache?" Professor asked her. She shook her head. He turned his gaze to me. "Brick?"

"I'm good too. Totally fine." I said.

He nodded, frowning, serious look still on his face. Then he sighed. "Well, keep me posted. If anything else happens, come to me immediately, and I mean _immediately_."

We both nodded, mirroring his seriousness.

After we left back up the laboratory steps and shut the door behind us, Blossom turned to me. "He seemed to be really worried about what I told him," she said, eyebrows furrowed, making a wrinkle form between them. "Don't you think?"

I sighed, admitting, "He did. But he's always worried these days, right?" I wrapped an arm around her and gave her a grin, hoping to lighten her mood. "Hey, lighten up. We just survived a giant cat and mouse game with Him, and we got to have our powers back for a while. That's reason to celebrate, right?"

She relented, lighting up a little and smiling. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Getting to fight felt pretty great."

I leaned down, catching her lips with mine briefly, then I leaned my lips against her ear, smiling. "Don't worry so much."

She chuckled, leaning against me and sighing. "That's like telling you to not wear so much red." I laughed, and she pulled away, looking up and smiling at me, stress melting off her features, the pink of her irises bright. "Wanna fix some late dinner here before we need to head back to our campuses?"

Liking the thought of getting to spend a little more time with her, I agreed.

Ten minutes later, we had started to make a meal in a big skillet on the stove top—well, okay, she was making most of it and telling me what to bring to her from the cabinets or refrigerator. It was our usual way whenever we cooked together. She enjoyed bossing me around, and I enjoyed watching her very carefully and skillfully chop and season and everything with a look of intense concentration on her face. It was kinda hot.

We were talking about something that had happened at her school earlier that week, joking and laughing, and everything was going fine. It was just the kind of thing I loved to do with her, and it had put my mind at ease, made me forget about the tumultuous events from earlier that day.

Things took a turn so quickly that I'd had no time to prepare myself.

She had just told me to go into the fridge to grab some vegetables from the bottom fresh drawer, and I was bent down, grabbing them and gathering them in one arm like a caveman. And as I was picking up a long carrot, there was a sudden, shattering crash against the kitchen linoleum like something had been dropped, and then a big thump.

I jumped slightly, making some tomatoes and bell peppers drop from my arm and back into the drawer. "Whoa there," I said, still bent over in the fridge, reaching down to pick the vegetables back up that I had dropped. "Everything okay?"

No answer.

"Bloss?" Frowning, I dropped all of the vegetables back into the drawer, standing back up and peeking around the fridge door.

And my heart seized and dropped down to my knees with a terror I'd never known at the sight of Blossom on the floor, unmoving.

" _Jesus_ ," I exclaimed, shoving past the open fridge door and rushing over to her. I fell down to my knees, reaching to her with my hands, gently shaking her. "Blossom?" She was unconscious. My voice rose. " _Blossom!_ " I pushed her hair out of her face, which had been over her face like a blanket, and immediately froze. Her nose was bleeding—but instead of bleeding red, it was bleeding black.

The horrible sight stunned me silent for a moment. Then, heart beating violently and ferociously in my chest, I picked her limp form up into my arms and stood. I walked carefully over to the laboratory door once again and opened it, careful not to jostle her, and then I rushed down the steps, calling for Professor.

* * *

**-Butch's POV-**

"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked my girlfriend for about the hundredth time. I was sitting on her bed in her dorm room, reclining back against her pillows and watching her restlessly pace the room.

"Fine," she replied, her tone clipped.

I shook my head, brows raising. "You don't seem fine," I remarked.

She sighed at me again. "I'm fine. Just pissed off." She chomped down on her lip, then stopped her pacing abruptly, stomping her foot in rage. She was so cute. "Why'd _I_ have to be the first one whose powers started fading again? I was kicking so much ass!"

I smiled wryly at her. "Professor said it would depend on how quickly we burned through the shots. You were going pretty hard out there, weren't you?"

Buttercup paused. Then, slowly, she shrugged. "I guess. Maybe," she muttered.

Laughing at the scowl she threw me, I shrugged too. "That's probably why then," I said. Then, sobering, I turned my head to the side as I looked at her. "Don't be upset. You kicked ass today." I paused, rolling my eyes. "Even if it was all just for a game."

She groaned, flopping down on Blossom's fluffy pink bed. "Don't even get me started on _that_."

I didn't want to go any further in that direction either, so I changed the subject. "Where's Blossom? She and Brick still at your house?"

She rolled over on her side, looking at me sideways. "Probably," she said.

A thought occurred to me. A slow smile spread on my face. "You don't think they're…" I trailed off, raising an eyebrow, letting her catch my drift with the mischievous tone of my voice.

Buttercup snorted. "Blossom? The perfect, model student pageant queen? No way in hell." She laughed outright. "Besides, even if they did, she would never try that at home, of all places."

"Bubbles and Boomer did."

This really caught her attention. She quickly sat up from her lying down position, eyes wide in disbelief. I had effectively distracted her from her bad mood. "What? When?"

I was smirking. "Christmas break." Boomer probably wouldn't have told me, since he had never been the type to kiss and tell. Too bad the dude talks in his sleep. Very articulately, too. Heard every sordid detail.

"Bubbles didn't tell me!" She was gaping in both amazement and shock. Then she stopped as she mulled it over for a few seconds, mouth shutting, then she nodded in approval. "Nice."

Interrupting, my cell went off. Leaning to the side to grab it out of my pocket, I looked at who it was. Brick. Smiling over at Buttercup, I stood up. "Let me go take this. Be right back." As I walked past her, I reached up with one hand, lightly squeezing her face between my fingers with affection, squishing her cheeks.

With a snort, batting my hand away with her knuckles, she nodded at me, her feet swinging against the floor. "Okay," she said. She still had an impressed look on her face from the information I'd given her.

Stepping out of the dorm room and shutting the door behind me, I answered my phone. "Yeah?" I said by way of greeting.

Brick's urgent voice came immediately. "Please tell me you're with Buttercup right now."

Taken aback at how he sounded, it took me a beat to respond. "Yeah, I am," I said, wary. "What's up, bro? Why do you ask?"

"You need to drive her to the Utonium house. Right now."

My throat tightened, the slight grin on my face fading away. Was something wrong? "Why?" I asked again. "Is something the matter?"

"Is Buttercup doing okay?" He sounded confused. "Wait, are you currently in the room with her?"

He was really starting to freak me out now. Frowning, I said, "No, I stepped out to talk to you. Is there something I should be worried ab—"

Brick interrupted me with a shout. "Go back in! Go back in the room!"

Now that I was shaken enough not to ask him yet another question, I immediately turned, reaching for the doorknob, turning it, and reentering the room. Buttercup wasn't on the bed anymore. I frowned. "Buttercup?" I walked into the room, rounded the end of Blossom's bed, and froze. My phone slipped from my hand and clattered against the wood floor.

Buttercup was on the ground. Unconscious. Her nose bleeding.

Bleeding Chemical X.

* * *

**-Boomer's POV-**

My heart squeezed with acute fear and pain all at once. As I walked toward the red front door, I looked down at Bubbles in my shaking arms. Passed out and unresponsive. Chemical X dripping from her nose like a nosebleed.

One second we'd been talking as I dropped her off at her sorority house, the next, she'd collapsed on the front lawn.

I'd rushed out of my car, scooping her up and bringing her back to the passenger seat before any passerby or her sorority sisters could see her crumpled on the ground. Almost immediately, my phone went off—I answered, asking Brick on the other end in a panicked voice what was going on. All he said, urgent, was to bring Bubbles to see Professor as soon as possible.

Hanging up the phone and gently securing my unconscious girlfriend with a seatbelt across her lap, I had shifted into drive and sped to the Utonium house.

Before I could even knock on the front door or ring the doorbell, the door swung open, Butch on the other side of it. He was pale, and clammy looking. He looked at me wordlessly, then glanced down at the unconscious Bubbles. His dark green eyes were wide and grim. He looked terrified.

I brushed past him, and he shut the front door behind me. The house was desolate with silence. Before I could say anything to him, ask him what was happening, Butch instructed in a hollow voice, "Go straight down to the laboratory."

Looking ahead, I saw the laboratory door propped open. I didn't pause to argue. I went. Butch stayed in the dark living room, sitting on the couch and then staring emptily at his feet.

I ventured down the laboratory steps. It was quiet as well down here, so quiet that I was afraid to speak. I reached the bottom of the stairs, and what I could hear now was a low, constant beeping that reminded me of hospitals. I wandered through the laboratory, past chalkboards and screens and equipment. There was no one to be seen. "Hello?" I finally said in a soft voice as I began walking down a dim hallway. It echoed against the sound proofed walls, along with the bottoms of my sneakers connecting with the hard, shiny tile floors.

Ahead of me, at the very end of the hallway, a door opened. Brick peeked his head out of it. He gestured me to walk over to him, and said in a low voice, "This way."

I obliged, walking toward him. The closer I got to him, the better I could see the dull fear and sadness in his eyes. Reaching him finally, he moved aside as I entered the doorway sideways, careful not to bump Bubbles. I had somehow forgotten that Professor had a miniature hospital ward in his lab—and as the realization hit me that that was where I was entering, I was beginning to get the feeling that I was about to leap off of a cliff, never to come back from what I was about to discover.

I turned, facing the room. And my stomach dropped.

Blossom and Buttercup both lay, on opposite sides of the room, on hospital beds. Both were passed out, and hooked up to heart monitors, as well as a few other machines checking their vital signs.

Professor sat between them, his head bent over a clipboard he was writing on. Then, sensing my presence, he looked up and turned to me grimly. He gestured behind me with his pen to the last hospital bed, positioned on the other end of the room. With a carefully composed tone, he told me, "Set Bubbles down there. I'll get her hooked up in a moment."

Obediently, I turned to make my way over to the bed. Before I walked away, though, Brick caught my gaze. For a wordless moment, we just looked at each other. My stomach churned.

Somehow, without anyone even telling me what exactly was going on, from the heavy dread in the atmosphere, I already knew. I knew that vitamins and shots wouldn't help us now.


	16. Initium Finis

**Chapter Fifteen**

**-Unknown POV-**

It was happening. It was happening now. Just like I knew it would. Just like I told them.

They should have listened.

* * *

**-Blossom's POV-**

When I woke up, the first thing I heard was the distinct beeping of three heart monitors.

Where was I?

I had no idea where I was, or how I'd even gotten there in the first place. Or how long I had been there. I blinked, eyes bleary as they adjusted to the strange white fluorescent light that shone across the plain white ceiling above me.

I turned my eyes downward, looking down at myself. I was lying on a hospital bed, and I wore a hospital gown. The environment around me smelled sterile, and the air was cold.

Finally, the individual pieces were coming together now; I was in the small hospital ward in Professor's laboratory in the basement. I hadn't been down here in years. What was I doing down here? Turning my head slightly, I saw a heart monitor next to my bed. The red line flashed across it with each beep. It beeped slower than the heartbeat I used to have—the pace of my heart was slower once again.

Another wave of remembrance hit me—the confusing, chaotic battle of illusions with Him, and beforehand, the use of the emergency Chemical X shots. The way the pace of my heart had sprinted after using it, the supercharged chemical singing in my veins like dynamite. The emergency shot I had taken had long worn off by now, and it was once more like the heartbeat of a human's heart.

Then I had rushed here to our childhood home to tell him about the way the shots had worn off—the mental image of seeing Buttercup on the concrete ground, after falling straight out of the sky by no choice of her own, flashed in my mind. Then Brick and I had gone upstairs and…

I couldn't remember anything after that.

I wondered what time it was. The small bit of space around my bed was surrounded by a tall white curtain, floor to ceiling, and there was no natural light coming in. There was no way to tell what time of day it was. Or what time of night. Because clearly I had fallen asleep. And I didn't know how or why I'd fallen asleep before getting back to my dorm room, let alone how long I had been out.

Inhaling, immediately I realized that there were oxygen tubes in my nose. Alarmed, I began to sit up. A hand stopped me, and I jumped.

A deep, soothing voice said to me, "No, don't get up." Brick. I turned my head. He was sitting in a chair next to my bed, looking down at me with scared, tired eyes. I hadn't seen him there. His hand tightened on my shoulder. "Stay here. You're too weak. Professor needs to examine you more."

I stared at him. "What happened?" I asked. When I spoke, my voice sounded brittle—and it lead me to believe that I had been out for much long than I'd thought.

He still held onto my shoulder, but his grip loosened slightly. "Your nose started bleeding Chemical X, and then you collapsed. I brought you here while you were passed out. You've been out for a while."

I didn't remember that at all. My nose had bled Chemical X. How? And why? That had never happened to me before. I started to nod at my fear at something being wrong confirmed, and then with a wince, I stopped. My head hurt. With a pause, something occurred to me, and I jumped to ask, "Where are Bubbles and Buttercup? Are they okay?"

Brick looked down at me in a way that told me he was trying very hard to stay calm. "No, baby. They're not. They collapsed like you did."

Oh no. _No._

I started getting up again, my head swimming. He didn't stop me this time. My heart rate increased, making the heart monitor beep recklessly. "I have to go see them." As I yanked the covers off of my body, I noticed that there was an IV in my arm. I stopped. Slowly, I looked at my bedside again, and for the first time noticed a drip. The bag had black liquid inside of it, and a tube from it ran down and into my right arm, where it was taped down tightly.

My eyes turned to Brick again, wary, and I asked him, "What is this?" I knew what it was, of course. It went without saying that I was actually asking what it was doing _in_ my arm.

My boyfriend's mouth worked for a few drawn out moments, looking like he was trying to find the right words to say. He was never afraid to be frank with me, even in the worst of situations. Seeing his hesitation scared me.

"Blossom," Brick said finally, his face looking strained. His voice sounded that way, too. "Things have gotten worse. You're not well. None of us are."

The weight and sheer size of his words descended on me all at once, like a shower of boulders raining down on my head. At that very moment, I knew that things were bad. Very bad. In almost the same way that I could instinctively feel crimes happening when I still had my powers, I could feel the negative energy of what was to come looming and surrounding us in that room like heavy storm clouds. It throbbed like a living thing, ominous and hopeless.

I stared at Brick for a long few seconds, seconds that felt like minutes, trying to find my voice. Finding it, I asked, "What do you mean?" My voice was quiet. "What's wrong with us?"

He looked away, turning his gaze straight to the floor and swallowing hard. "I'm sorry, I can't say anything. Professor made me promise not to tell you. He has to tell you."

"Where is he?" I asked immediately, gripping the sides of my bed to start to get up again.

Brick stood up from his chair, gesturing for me to stay lying down. "No, stay there. Rest. I'll get him." He began to walk towards the curtain that surrounded my bed. Just as he was leaving through it, he looked back at me one more time, anxiety in his eyes. He didn't smile.

After he disappeared through the curtain, I heard the creak of a door opening, then shutting again.

I sat very still, listening to my surroundings. I heard the sound of soft breathing somewhere beyond the curtain to my left—or was it two people breathing? —and then breathing far across the room. It was clear that I wasn't alone in the hospital ward, and it was clear that my sisters were in hospital beds too, but it was also clear that I was the only one that had woken up so far.

Despite the rolling ache in my head, I started to scoot up in my bed. The movement jarred my head, and it ached to the point of nearly stinging, but I had to prop my back up against the pillow behind me. It helped me feel less like a dead fish just lying there.

Almost right after I had finished struggling to sit up, all the while huffing and puffing, there was the sound of the door to the hospital ward opening up again.

My curtain opened, and Professor came over to me, Brick following closely after him. Professor looked like he had barely gotten any rest, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. His face was calm, but there was something else boiling just underneath that calmness that I couldn't place. He gazed down at me for a moment, just examining me. Then he asked, "How are you feeling, sweetheart?"

"Head hurts," I said in a soft voice. "And I feel pretty weak." I glanced over at Brick, who had come to stand by my bed again. He remained silent, just stared down at me with the same quiet anxiousness on his face.

Professor nodded, lips pressed together tightly. "As I expected."

Even knowing the answer but feeling the need to ask anyway, I asked, "Have Bubbles and Buttercup woken up yet?"

Professor shook his head. "No." Then he turned briskly, continuing over his shoulder, "but I'm going to wake them for this. This is important, and I would rather have all of you hear this at once." He glanced at Brick. "Help me open the curtains, please?"

Wordlessly, Brick detached from my bedside, leaving through the curtains around my bed and then immediately drawing them back. Through my renewed view, I saw Professor opening the curtains which surrounded Bubbles' hospital bed across the large room. Boomer was next to her bed in a chair, stirring awake from slumber in his uncomfortable upward position. Then, to my left, I saw Brick opening the curtains surrounding Buttercup's bed. Next to her bedside was a pallid Butch, wide awake with torment in his eyes.

Gently, Professor woke each of my sisters. Bubbles woke quietly, confusion and slight fear on her face. Buttercup woke up groaning and complaining about her head aching. Bubbles bed was wheeled over to the side of the room that Buttercup and I were on, and then Professor pulled up a chair, adjusting it so that it openly faced all three of our beds.

Professor turned to the boys and asked them calmly, "Could you boys please step out of the room for ten minutes or so while I tell them? I need this moment alone with my girls."

None of them argued. After one more look at each of us, all three of them left, closing the door behind them.

A beat of silence went by as I exchanged questioning and apprehensive glances with my sisters. Professor then sat heavily on his chair. "Well," he paused, wistful look on his face, "there's no need to put this off any longer. The sooner you girls know what is happening, the better."

My sisters were quiet. I shifted in discomfort, my head throbbing in answer. "Okay, Professor." He looked over at me, and I looked him in the eye, courageous only because I had to be. "We're ready."

After a succinct nod, Professor took in a deep breath and began. "Blossom, you already know this. Bubbles, Buttercup…you lost consciousness hours ago. After your noses started to bleed Chemical X."

Shock rippled. Buttercup spoke first. "What?"

"Your noses did not bleed blood, but Chemical X alone." Professor looked at her evenly. "And then you blacked out. Butch brought you here immediately after it happened." Her turned his gaze to our blonde sister. "And likewise, Bubbles, Boomer brought you here."

Bubbles was staring at him, quiet, face pale, eyes wide in her face. It seemed like she couldn't say anything at all. Buttercup launched right into a demand. "Tell us what happened to us."

Professor looked down at his lap, hands fiddling. He cut straight to the chase. "I've done some analyzations of you girls while you were unconscious. And what I found was…not what I expected." He paused heavily. "When I made the emergency supercharged Chemical X shots—well, they were as close to perfect as I could make them. But there was one thing I didn't consider. I didn't consider how the shots would fade out of your systems, and how the already faded Chemical X would react to the supercharged Chemical X." He stopped again, shaking his head. "I was in such a rush to make them perfect that I wasn't thinking about what their possible consequences would be. That was my mistake."

"How did it react?" I prompted him. Dread was starting to boil in my stomach.

"Badly." Professor sighed, bringing a hand to rub harshly against his forehead, then his temple. "Very badly."

My stomach heaved, then clenched. All three of us stared at him in horror, waiting for him to continue on his own because we were afraid to ask anything more.

Far off in the distance, there was the sound of a siren—an ambulance siren. It wailed, growing louder, louder still, then began to fade as it continued its journey beyond our street. The basement became quiet once more, so quiet that the slightest shift seemed loud.

Finally, Professor went on. "The supercharged chemical seems to have…accelerated the degradation process. The shots worked as they were supposed to at first. But the shot burned so quickly in your systems that what was left of the structure of the original Chemical X in your bloodstreams is…well." He stopped for so long this time that I was afraid that he wasn't going to continue. But something worse happened. He did continue. "It's falling apart."

"Falling apart?" My voice shook as I echoed him.

He nodded. Slowly. "That's what was going to happen eventually. When your powers started to fade, I had suspected that things would lead to this. I had hoped so strongly that it wouldn't, but…" He trailed off, adjusting his glasses and swallowing hard. The previous sentence went unfinished as he started another one. "And so as I developed the emergency shot, I continued researching. Because I knew that beyond the chemical falling apart, things would get even worse. Things would be unfixable."

Buttercup blurted, her voice burning, "What do you mean, unfixable?" The confusion had long left her face. And an unstable fear had taken the place of it. Bubbles remained silent, terrified.

Professor paused, then turned wide, sad eyes to her. He looked miserable and scared. More than the day that he had told us about our powers going away. Seeing him—our rock, our creator—be so fearful and vulnerable, almost like a lost child, was probably the most terrifying thing that I had ever seen. His voice quiet, he said, "I thought the vitamins and shots would help it last longer. I've been looking endlessly for a permanent solution; I've been searching everywhere. I was hoping those would extend things, give me more time. I thought I would have more time…" His voice trailed off when his tone had taken an uncharacteristically panicked turn. He leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and bringing his face down into his open hands.

For about a minute, the three of us watched him try to calm his breathing. On my blonde sister, I saw her breathing the way that she did when she tried to keep from crying, her brow furrowed, lips wobbling and her eyes wide. On my brunette sister was untethered, trembling horror.

Each of us had figured out what was coming. But we still needed to hear it ourselves, to hear it confirmed.

My voice was only a whisper. "Professor?"

Painstakingly, Professor finally lifted his face from his hands. Even slower, he raised his vulnerable, red-rimmed gaze to mine. After taking in a shaking breath, he spoke clearly. "Girls, I wish that there was something else that I could do. There may be, and I'm going to give it all I've got to find whatever that is, with whatever time we have left. But no matter what, you have to know that I'm sorry." He looked at each of us, one by one, sad brown eyes meeting ours. None of us answered.

Cautiously, eyes squeezed shut, he continued. "Over time, over years, the Chemical X in your bloodstream has been…consuming your regular blood. Bit by bit. Replacing it. So gradually that the total loss of blood was unnoticeable until now. And now…" He opened his eyes again. They were full of darkness. "Now it's falling apart. Just like the cloned chemical in those monsters all those months ago…it's not just losing potency. It's destroying itself. And once your Chemical X sputters out completely…"

There was a very long pause. It was the merciful moment of cease-fire before he delivered the crushing blow. "Your Chemical X is the only thing that has been keeping you alive. And once it goes out, you will die."

#

Professor had long left the room.

My sisters and I sat up on our hard, uncomfortable hospital beds in desolate, empty silence. The silence stretched on and on, with none of us able to even say a word, let alone look each other in the eye. Because if we saw each other's unguarded, raw pain, that would make what we just heard real.

Because that was just it. This didn't feel real. Not yet.

I couldn't comprehend the words I'd heard Professor say. They couldn't possibly be true. It felt like some horrible nightmare. I prayed that I would wake at any moment.

There was no way this was real. He wouldn't let this happen.

Professor always had a solution for everything. Always had some invention, some insight, bringing in a miracle at the last minute. He always did. He did for battles, for school projects that we ran into problems with, for attempts at making a meal that had gone sour in some way. He always knew how to fix things. I thought he could fix anything— _prevent_ anything.

Even death. So much that it, in all honesty, had never seemed like something I would ever have to dread.

But he was only human, after all.

I could feel it coming back. Like an old familiar friend, there it was, dark and thick and viscous inside of me—rising up and consuming me for the first time in years, bubbling up and filling my veins and the orifices between my organs and bones and muscles and making them all impossibly heavy. Only this time I knew that it was more unrelenting than it had ever been before, taking a form so bitter and malicious that it sucked everything else out of me.

Like a shadowy part of my past, depression began to make its way back to me, wrapping its arms and legs around me and tying weights to my feet. Heavy, thick, cold—beckoning me to sleep forever.

It was coming. And I couldn't stop it.

My chest felt so heavy that I thought I wouldn't be able to speak. But after quite some time of silence, somewhere inside of me, I found the words, and my mouth opened, and I said them. "You know I would do anything for the both of you," I lifted my gaze slowly, then looked between my sisters. Neither of them looked at me. I finished, "Right?"

No response. They only stared sightlessly, grief spread all over their faces.

I continued on, even knowing I still wouldn't get an answer. My voice was brittle, and it came out as a mere whisper this time. "I would trade my soul for the both of you to live."

As I watched, I saw Bubbles' bottom lip quiver. But still she said nothing. She didn't even cry. Just sat with her eyes closed, face screwed up in pain.

When I was least expecting a reply, Buttercup's empty voice came, stating simply, "No point."

I turned my eyes to gaze at her. Her face was blank—the grief gone. Just slate clean, the way that her face looked just before a battle. I recognized it. It was the way she cleared her expression of any emotion at all, to keep enemies from being able to read her.

I also saw it that one time. The time that Butch broke her heart.

And there, in that moment, that's how I knew—there was a storm ahead. A hurricane of proportions we had never known before. Perhaps the last storm we would ever know.

* * *

**-Another Unknown POV-**

I awoke on the cold tiles of my makeshift underground lair. Vision blurry, I blinked, then I blinked again.

Around me, I heard the sounds of my machinery and computers running, but the sound of them dragged thickly like they were coming to me through long tunnels. My head throbbed sharply, like explosions of thunder inside of my skull. It was another blasted headache.

Only this time I had passed out. How long had I been unconscious, just lying here on the floor? What had caused the unconsciousness in the first place?

I reached up to my head with one long clawed hand, willing the throbbing to go away on its own. I'd been getting them for nearly a month and a half now. Nothing except limiting my movement and sleeping would help them, and they always came back. But I'd never fainted like this before.

Just as I began to sit up, my hand still glued to my forehead, I felt something leak from my nose. I glanced down, irritated. Then I noticed some peculiar spots of black on my shirt. I frowned, squinting down at them. I couldn't place what they were at first.

I felt more leaking out of both sides of my nose. I touched my hand to my upper lip, drawing it back after a moment to peer at it. Black liquid, all over my hand. Dripping out of my nose and off of my face.

An abrupt, fierce wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere, and quickly, I sat up further, scrambling over to the nearby trash bucket. I barely made it in time before the vomit came up and out of me as I squeezed my eyes shut.

When I was finished, reluctantly, I opened my eyes. At what I saw before me, uncontrollably, I began to tremble. Peering down into the waste bucket, I saw it.

Black liquid. Blacker than midnight. All over the inside of the bucket, dripping down my chin.

Blackness. Nothing but blackness.

* * *

_"You only live twice:_ / _Once when you are born_ / _And once when you look death in the face." -Ian Fleming_

 


	17. Rêve du Paradis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains alcohol abuse.

**Chapter Sixteen**

**-Blossom’s POV-**

How do you live when the days that you have left have an exact, precise, cruel number?

I didn’t know how it was possible, but things had actually gotten worse.

I thought that losing my powers would be the worst thing to happen to me. I thought it would be something that I could emotionally never move past, something that I could maybe arrange my life around but would always think about when I was alone in bed at night and nothing could keep the creeping misery away. I thought it would be like a phantom limb that was inside of my body somewhere, something that didn’t exist anymore but still felt so vital for me to use that there would always be a certain emptiness in my everyday activities.

The part of my soul that yearned to feel the air whistling through my hair, whipping past my skin like fingers lifting me higher into the air, feeling the biting wisps of clouds evaporate against me—perhaps it would’ve always felt unfulfilled and sad.

But there could have been ways around it that I would have been willing to do. Almosts. There were many human equivalents of flying. Sky diving. Bungee jumping. Cliff jumping. All ways of falling through the sky. They seemed so close to the real thing. Maybe it wouldn’t have been quite enough. But it would’ve been something that I _could_ do.

And when the emergency shots were still a possibility, of course I knew they wouldn’t be permanent. But I still could’ve lived a tiny piece of my existence from before, in short little increments once in a while. And maybe that would’ve been okay—not quite enough, but just enough to get by. Just enough to survive.

I was just learning to be mostly human. I was just learning to work around the physical inconveniences that humans always dealt with. I didn’t like it, but I was doing it. I could’ve become better at it with time. And now it would all be pointless.

I was dying.

My dazed shock had finally worn off after a couple of days, and once it left, I found myself wishing that it would come back. That it would come back and shield me with its’ cold numb walls.

The knowledge of what was happening to my sisters and I hung over my head like a phantom at all times—watching my every move, surrounding my consciousness, filling my every breath with the understanding that I only had a certain amount of time left to keep breathing.

A few days had passed, and yet I still hoped I would wake up from this nightmare.

My sisters and I stayed home from school every day to stay under Professor’s close observation. We didn’t leave the house, either.

As for the boys, they reluctantly went to classes daily after all three of us, and Professor as well, implored them to carry on with their studies. After their respective days of classes were finished, though, they drove over to our house immediately and stayed with us overnight instead of at their dorms.

To stay occupied during the day, I stayed constantly busy. I kept every inch of the house clean, scrubbing and vacuuming and mopping every chance I got, the moment it started to look less than perfectly spotless. At one point during one late afternoon, I became frustrated with how the mop seemed to not get the kitchen floor clean enough—so I got on my hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water, gloves and a sponge and scrubbed it myself. Scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until every single scuff and spot was gone. After an hour or two, distantly, I felt Brick standing in the kitchen doorway, watching me with concern, and telling me to take a break. I ignored him. I kept scrubbing.

When I took my rubber gloves off after I finished, my hands were calloused and cracked, bleeding black. I only stared down at them, unfeeling, waiting for them to heal themselves instantly as my wounds had for my whole life.

They didn’t. They didn’t heal at all.

Another day, when I had taken a break from cleaning and I didn’t have my face buried in one of my multiple books from my bedroom bookshelves, Brick and I sat on my bed, talking. Our backs rested propped up against my headboard, our legs stretched out the length of my bedspread.

At first we talked about unimportant things. The weather. Whatever was coming on television that night. Even some upcoming movies we wanted to see. Anything to distract us from talking about what was happening to us.

Then, out of the blue, Brick broke our unspoken rule of avoidance.

“I had a nosebleed this morning.”

The forced smile on my face dropped away immediately. Nausea rose in my throat. I asked to confirm, “A Chemical X nosebleed?” I looked over at him in time to see him nod slowly, his lips pinched. My throat went dry as I stared at him.

He continued, voice grim. “Boomer had one yesterday in class. We’re waiting on Butch to have one next.”

I looked away from him silently, not trusting if I could hold it together if I said anything in reply.

I felt him staring at me. “Professor gave me a drip. I’m okay now.”

Swallowing hard, I managed a nod. Then, with a quiet voice, I corrected, “For now.” At that, Brick stayed silent, too.

With one of my bandaged hands, I reached across my soft, plushy bedspread, taking his hand in mine. Then I leaned my head against his shoulder. We didn’t say anything more to each other, just sat in my quiet, cold bedroom.

#

“Yes, hello, may I please talk to someone in the registry department?” Over the phone, my voice rang out more confident sounding than it had in nearly a week. The person on the other end of my university’s official office line told me to hold. They probably never even suspected that something might be wrong.

I had put it off long enough. There was no use putting it off any longer. It was time.

A chipper voice greeted me on the other end of the line after a few nerve-wracking minutes of listening to classical hold music passed. “Hi, this is Katie from Warner University’s registry office, how may I help you today?”

I forced myself to smile. If I smiled, then she would hear me smiling, and then she couldn’t hear the grief that was crawling its’ way up the back of my throat. “Hi, Katie. This is Blossom Utonium. I need to request emergency academic leave of absence for my sisters and I.”

There was a moment of pause when I heard some papers shuffling in the background. “Okay, I can do that for you. What is the reason for this leave?”

My throat tightened. I kept the forced phony smile on my face. “Medical reasons.”

This gave her true pause. Even without seeing her face, I could tell I had caught her off guard. She had, of course, known who I was just from my name. I stiffened, anticipating any questions she might throw at me, my press-mode in full effect even though she wasn’t a press member at all. Finally, she said politely, “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

I let out a breath of relief at her generosity.

She continued, her professional aura intact. “It looks like all three of you qualify for a leave, you’re all in good standing based on last semester’s grades. And you’re just making the cutoff for leave requests. Can I ask how long this leave might be?”

My breath hitched. Somehow, I hadn’t given this any thought at all. Why hadn’t I realized I would need to give them an approximate amount of time the leave would be?

The dark thought arose from the very back of my mind before I could stop it: How long would it take for us to die?

The single dangerous thought overwhelmed me so severely that I lost my voice.

“Hello?” The kind voice at the other end rang out after a few long moments. “Blossom, are you still there?”

Breaking through my fog, I forced out, “Yes, I’m sorry. I was just thinking.” I swallowed hard, a response finally leaping from my rational mind. “The leave will be one semester.”

One semester. The rest of January, February, March, April, May. Five months.

By then, we could most certainly be dead. And the news would get out about it, spread to every corner of the world, and the University would know that we would never be coming back. That we would never be going back to school again. Every grade we ever got, every essay we ever did, all for nothing with no graduation—they’d be sealed up in a tomb with us, along with the rest of the things we would never finish or accomplish.

I squeezed my eyes shut as Katie described to me which forms I would have to print out on the University’s website for my sisters and I, fill them out, and bring them to the main office to get signed by an advisor. Then it would be done, and we’d be university students no longer.

I answered her in affirmation, and then we hung up. Then my cell slipped from my hand, rattling against the wood surface of the dining room table as I collapsed into my folded arms. The uncontrollable sobs rose out of me before I could quell them or suppress them.

The dining room echoed with my hysterical sobbing.

#

The next day, sitting down heavily in the passenger seat of Brick’s parked burgundy car, I slammed the door shut after I settled inside. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the leather seat. “Well,” I said to him after a few moments, where he had been waiting for me in the driver’s seat. My voice was bleak. “It’s done.”

His voice was quiet. “You did what you had to do.”

I drew in a breath, then exhaled for a long time. “You mean what I was _forced_ to do.” Getting those forms signed in my university’s main office, then turning them in and setting them free, had been one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do. And as a leader, I had done plenty of things that were hard before, so that was saying something.

Brick was silent for a moment. Then I heard him lean over in his seat, and then afterwards, felt his lips press to my forehead. The scent of his aftershave drifted to my nose. Comforting. After he pulled away, he said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

Finally, reluctantly, I opened my eyes. I had been trying to block out the sight of my beloved campus, the campus that I would never set foot on ever again. Goodbyes were never my strongest suit. “Professor said to come back home after dropping off the forms,” I reminded him, frowning.

“Yes he did,” Brick allowed, turning the key and starting the car’s engine again. “But he also didn’t say we couldn’t stop for ice cream afterwards.”

Unable to help it, one corner of my mouth quirked upward. “Brick.”

He looked at me, ruby eyes round and innocent. “Bloss?”

“It’s 34 degrees outside,” I told him, lifting my hand and pointing at the small thermometer on his dashboard. “Fahrenheit.”

“So?” He shifted from park to reverse.

His feigned deliberate ignorance choked a chuckle out of me. It made me feel a little better. “ _So_ , it’s too cold for ice cream.”

Brick scoffed, starting to pull out of the parking space we’d been stalled in. “Says who? Killjoys? Or bellyachers? Sourpusses? Faultfinders?” He shot a quick playful look at me before his eyes locked on the rear view mirror again. “Maybe _you’re_ a faultfinder,” he said to me.

This time, a genuine laugh bubbled out of me. The knot in my stomach loosened further. “Okay, okay,” I relented. “Stop using words from yesteryear.”

“Curmudgeon,” he added quickly.

I snorted, restraining another laugh. I folded my arms. “Fine. Let’s get ice cream.”

We left the parking lot for the main office, and then we left the campus. I restrained the urge to look back at it. His face lit up with a big grin at my response, then reached to grab my hand with his free one, keeping one hand firmly on the steering wheel. “That’s the spirit.”

Although I wasn’t particularly hungry, I appreciated the distraction. He knew I needed this, and that’s why he was doing it. Distracting us both from the despair hanging over our heads. We both needed it, in truth. We needed to do something fun, even if it was small.

As we drove away, I closed my eyes again, squeezing his hand tightly with mine.

#

I leaned over the selections of ice cream flavors on the other side of the glass, considering each flavor slowly and carefully. My gloved hands pressed against the clear barrier.

The family owned ice cream shop, Pop’s Ice Cream & Gelato, was basically deserted, the opposite of how I was sure it would look on a blistering summer day. The only person here besides us was the lone teenage girl running the cash register, who dolefully had looked up from her phone’s screen when we had walked in, along with a less than enthusiastic obligatory customer greeting.

Brick, coming over to me from the other end of the display of flavors, came up behind me, close enough that his breath stirred the strands of hair that hung in my face as he talked. “Did you look at the gelato?”

“Not yet,” I answered him, my eyes switching between the bubble gum flavor and the strawberry shortcake flavor. “I was looking at these flavors first. Do they have a lot of it?”

“Yeah.” Gently, he pushed the hair that hung in my face behind my ear. “You should come see.” He took my hand.

Hands connected, we went over to the opposite end of the flavor displays where all of their gelato selections were. They had so many good sounding flavors—dark chocolate, raspberry, hazelnut, peach, tiramisu, and a few more.

As my eyes darted over them eagerly, taking in the extra creamy delicious looking concoctions, a thought occurred to me. I asked Brick, turning to look at him, “Wait, isn’t gelato more expensive than regular ice cream?”

“Ours is,” the girl behind the counter butted in, acknowledging us for the first time since we’d come in. She eyed me with a glazed over disinterest, popping her chewing gum. “Ours is homemade with exported ingredients.”

“It’s okay,” Brick told me immediately, giving me an encouraging look. “It doesn’t matter. Pick whichever kind you want and I’ll get it for you.”

Smiling up at him and squeezing his hand gratefully again, I turned back to the numerous flavors to make the nearly torturous decision of deciding on one.

#

We sat at a table in the corner of the shop, deciding to stay inside to eat our cold treats instead of eating them out in the cold car.

I had finally decided on the raspberry gelato in a bowl, and Brick had gotten the dark chocolate gelato in a cone. The girl behind the counter went blissfully back to whatever she had been doing on her phone before we’d come in—once when I took a glance at her, I saw her posing and taking a picture of herself with her phone’s camera. Brick and I ate and enjoyed each other’s company in the nearly quiet space. The only sounds came from the counter girl, the scraping of my plastic spoon against my plastic bowl, and the low adult contemporary music that came from overhead speakers.

Then, maybe fifteen minutes after we had sat down, some unexpected company came in, disrupting the quiet.

A little girl with a curly dark ponytail and a bright yellow winter coat and her mother entered the shop, making the bell above the door ring with their entrance. The girl behind the counter rolled her eyes and put her phone down again. “Welcome to Pop’s Ice Cream and Gelato,” she droned automatically.

“Hi!” The little girl said back to her, grinning a gap-toothed grin. “I wanted a ice cream cone even though it’s cold outside, and my mommy said yes!”

Her mom smiled at the counter girl in chagrin. “She’s very excited to try some ice cream from this place, we’ve never been here before.” The teenager nodded back at her in polite phony interest, seeming like she couldn’t care less.

Brick and I exchanged a look of amusement across the table at each other.

The little girl turned around, probably to see if there was anyone else there in the shop, and she spotted us at the table. Cheeks rosy, she gasped in delight. “Mommy, look! The Powerpuff girl and Powerpuff boy are here! They’re eating ice cream when it’s cold, too! Look, look!”

Caught off guard, Brick and I flinched at the sudden recognition. We exchanged another look—mine in surprise, Brick’s in embarrassment, probably at being called a Powerpuff boy.

The mother grabbed her daughter’s hand, keeping her from coming charging over to us in her excitement. She stared at us too, but in apology. “I’m so sorry,” she said, then she looked down at her daughter sternly. “Now, sweetie, leave them alone. Just because they’re superheroes, it doesn’t mean they don’t want to be treated normally. They deserve their privacy.”

I smiled at the little girl warmly, then at the mother. “It’s all right, don’t worry about it. We don’t mind.”

The little one was still staring at me very intently, the gap between her two front teeth on full display. Then, abruptly, her smile faded. She frowned in what looked like concern, her eyes wide. “Mommy,” she started, her voice softer, “What’s wrong with the Powerpuff girl’s face?”

A jolt of hurt went through me, then confusion. What was she talking about?

The mother gasped in horror at what her daughter had said to me. “ _Shelby,_ ” she began to scold her. She looked up at me, probably to apologize, then she froze. Her free hand came up to cover her mouth. “Oh dear,” she said.

“Bloss,” Brick said suddenly, getting up from the table. When I looked over at him, he was staring at me, too. In fear. “Let’s go. Now.”

I looked up at him, alarmed. “Why—” The sensation of something dripping onto my bottom lip interrupted me. Quickly, I brought my fingers to my lips, then drew them back. Black liquid. I froze, staring down at it on my hand and saying nothing, fear beginning to surface inside of me. This hadn’t happened to me in public before, and now it was happening in plain sight. With witnesses.

Brick, his hands suddenly completely free of his gelato, came over to my side quickly. “Let’s get you home. Come on.” His arm hooked around my back underneath my arms, drawing me up and out of the cold metal chair. He turned me away from our small audience, hurriedly ushering me out of the door.

Just above the ringing of the bell announcing our leave, I heard the disturbed voice of the counter girl saying to the mother and daughter, “Did you see that?”

I still felt the gazes of the mother, little girl, and even the counter girl on us through the front windows as we rushed through the cold, got into the car, and tore away from there.

* * *

 

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

Pulling the ends of my sleeves down over the tips of my fingers, I pushed out of the back door. The frigid late January air greeted me with an icy smack to the exposed skin of my face. Throwing a glance behind me to make sure no one had followed me, I pulled the door shut behind me.

It was noon, and the sun was high in the sky, but it did nothing to dispel the frigid cold. The white light it provided only kept it from feeling like night.

Eagerly, I freed my fingers from their sleeve prisons, exposing them to the freezing air but not caring. I reached into the pocket of my sweat pants, tugging out the box of cigarettes that was inside. Next, I reached into the other pocket for my lime green lighter.

Smoking was not something I had always done. I had only taken it up a few weeks earlier, when the tormented thoughts of losing my powers had become too much for me. I had needed a release. When Professor had broken the bad news to us a week ago, though, it became more than just a habit for me.

I needed the soothing burning in my lungs. The rush that it gave me throughout my body kept me sane. It kept me feeling like I wasn’t totally losing my mind. And most importantly, it kept my mind off the things I didn’t want to acknowledge.

It helped me escape just for a little while from the weight of my impending tragedy.

And at least if I had lost control of nearly every aspect of my life, this was maybe the last thing I had control of. It was one of the last things that felt like it was truly mine.

I held the end of a fresh cigarette between my lips, then flicked on my lighter, shielding the tiny flame with my free hand from the cold breeze. The other end of the small stick lit up, and a corner of my mouth twitched up in quiet satisfaction.

As it began to burn, I took a slow, savoring drag. Held it. Felt the warmth spread throughout my body. The anger and tension inside of me released. With a sigh of relief, I blew out the smoke. It floated up and away from me.

I did this again, then again, standing and staring out at the quiet backyard. Glancing to the left, at our neighbor’s backyard—the Smiths—for a fleeting moment, I wondered how Crystal-slash-Julie was doing at her fancy Citiesville college. We hadn’t heard from her, Aimee or Victoria in months. I guessed some distancing between high school friends was common after starting college. I wondered if the Smith parents still hated us. Probably. They’d probably hate us until they lived in a senior home, and maybe after that, too. I blew smoke out with a silent, humorless chuckle.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later that my sweet silence was rudely interrupted with a voice. “I knew I’ve been smelling nicotine on you lately.” I whirled, facing my intruder. Butch was leaning against the wall next to the back door, arms folded, face blank except for subdued amusement in his eyes.

He’d been so quiet. How long had he been standing there? I appraised him with a scorn that I couldn’t seem to help. “How the hell did you know I was back here?”

“Since you’ve been acting all suspicious and sneaking away at random intervals during the day, I decided to follow you,” he said simply. His eyebrows rose, disappearing behind his raven hair. “Hello, by the way.”

Realizing I was glaring at him, I forced my expression to lighten. With a sigh, I cleared my throat. “Sorry. You just surprised me.” I had been somewhat avoiding him lately. Maybe because of his first Chemical X nosebleed a few days earlier. I hadn’t been _trying_ to avoid him on purpose, really. It was just that the unsettled fear I got when I looked at him now made it hard to forget what was happening to me. To all of us.

Butch remained against the wall, and his eyes slid down to the cigarette between my fingers. He nodded at it. “You don’t seem like you’re new at that. You handle it like a pro.”

Sheepish, I shook my head. “I just started this month.” I lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not gonna blab, are you?”

He shook his head. “I know you don’t want me to say it, but,” he paused, unfolding his arms and putting his hands into his hoodie pockets, “You’re probably not exactly in the best shape to be doing that right now.”

I blinked at him, then turned back around to face the open backyard, shrugging. “Guess not,” I said. I brought the cig back to my lips to punctuate the uncaring tone of my voice.

There was a pause as I exhaled, then footsteps approaching me. Slowly, his arms wound around my shoulders, bringing my back flush against his warm body. I hadn’t realized how badly I had needed his touch until that very moment, when I felt all the cords in my back relax. Sighing, I tilted my head back to rest against his collarbone. He leaned his face down, and understanding immediately what he was doing, I lifted my hand higher so he could reach.

His lips closed around the end of the cigarette I held as he bummed it from me, and drew. He held it. Then he brought his hand gently to the underside of my jaw, cupping it, tilting my head back so his lips could meet mine. They opened, and the smoke drifted lazily between my open lips and into my mouth. His lips and the bitter, burning smoke—both of my vices mingled. My toes curled.

Butch broke the kiss, drew from the cigarette again, then blew his smoke out just as I blew out the smoke he’d passed on to me. He looked down at me seriously, despite the dry smirk on his lips. “Guess we’re both screwed.”

A slight, dismal smile appeared briefly on my face. Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back to press a small, soft kiss on the exposed skin of his neck. Then, dark smile dropping away as quickly as it came, I turned my eyes back to the slate gray sky. I took another drag, holding it for a long time, then releasing it.

“I’m cold,” I said after a long silence. I turned my head slightly towards his, where his chin rested on my shoulder. “Aren’t you cold?”

He gave me a lifeless shrug. His eyes stared ahead, sightless. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m always cold these days. A little extra cold doesn’t make much difference.”

Slow, I nodded. I understood. I felt exactly the same way.

#

Soon, after all three of the boys turned in their formal leave of absence to the University of Townsville and started staying home all the time, the cigarettes weren’t enough for me anymore.

The slow, sweet burn of their poison wasn’t enough to heal me. I needed more.

“Do you know what Professor will do to me if he catches us?” Butch whispered to me. He kept taking glances through the dark living room and up at the top of the stairs for any signs of movement. “Buttercup, I wouldn’t have to worry about this whole Chemical X thing anymore. His wrath would be swift and merciless.” He paused, then muttered, “On second thought, maybe dying this way would be better.”

Ignoring most of what he said, including the super tactless joke, I rolled my eyes as I turned to face him, whispering back, “We’re in college. We can’t be expected to just stay home all the time like some elementary schoolers. Besides, I would be the one he’d get mad at. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

A noise came suddenly, and we jumped to look at the source of it. Our mystery was immediately solved when a car’s headlights passed through the front window and then faded away along with the sound of the car’s engine. We both let go of the breath we’d been holding.

Turning to me, he answered one of my arguments with a counterargument. “Yeah, but it’s midnight. I doubt that leaving in the middle of the day and leaving at midnight would be the same thing to your dad.”

A swift, sudden wave of annoyance and bitterness hit me at once. “He’s not my dad.”

“What?” He looked at me in confusion. “What do you mean?”

I said curtly in a quiet voice, “He’s human. I’m not. He’s not my father. Don’t call him that.” Keeping the hard, callous expression on my face, I turned back toward the front door. “Now, come on. You said you wanted to make me happy. This will make me happy. And since you’re so damn paranoid about getting caught sneaking out, let’s just get out of here already.”

Wordlessly, he followed me as I quickly opened the door and walked into the frigid night. Settling into his car as he started the engine, I took a glance at him. He was frowning. Knowing that I couldn’t ask him what he was making that face for without being questioned myself, I kept my mouth shut.

The drive was silent.

#

We exited the 24-hour liquor store, our purchases in a plastic bag, and sat back down in his car. Back in the darkness of the car, I pushed the hood of my sweatshirt back down, not needing it anymore to hide my face to keep from being recognized. I glanced over at Butch in time to see him do the same with his coat hood.

I reached down underneath my seat, grabbing the tall paper bags I’d stashed down there. I handed one to him, then grabbed the watermelon flavored bottle of vodka Butch had bought with cash—along with an old fake ID he had used to buy booze back in his villain days.

Taking the paper bag from me and taking out the bottle of whiskey he’d gotten for himself, he glanced up at me. There was a hesitant light in his eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I rolled my eyes, putting my bottle into the paper bag and wrapping my hand around the neck of it, making the bag bunch underneath my fingers. “Lighten up. It’s just a drink. I’m not jumping off a bridge or something.” He said nothing, just directed that same frown at me. I leveled a scowl at him, turning to open the car door again. “If you’re going to keep looking at me like that, I’m taking this outside.”

I sprang out into the cold night air again, then slammed the car door shut. I glanced around the parking lot. Still as empty as it was when we’d arrived here. The small liquor store was off of a quiet street that wasn’t a main one, and barely any cars drove past. No cops, either.

Turning away, I hopped up on the neon green hood of Butch’s car, sitting there with my legs folded up. Wrestling the top of the bottle open, I discarded the cap and then eagerly brought the bottle up to my lips, tipping my head back and taking the first blessed sip.

It was at once tart and heady with the taste of melon, and then biting and unpleasant. Then it went down so burning and delightful that I shuttered. Quickly, I took another sip. Savored it. Then I took a gulp.

I felt the vibration when Butch opened the driver’s door, then felt it slam as I heard it close. “Take it easy. Don’t want you to hurl on my paint job.” I glanced over at where he stood beside the car. He had an unreadable look on his face this time.

I blinked blankly at him, then turned my eyes away. “Does it look like I care?” I muttered. The air pulsed with the monotone bitterness of my words. A heavy three seconds passed. I took another sip. The liquid was beginning to take its’ hold on me—my stomach and chest began filling with sleepy, comforting heat, and I welcomed it.

Finally, Butch’s feet disconnected from the pavement, and he climbed up on the hood of his car, sitting next to me. In my peripheral vision, I saw him tip his concealed bottle back, taking a thick gulp of his whiskey. Another quiet few minutes passed. Then, in a low voice, he asked me, “Does watermelon flavored vodka actually taste better?”

I sighed heavily. For some reason, more than anything else, I wished he would stop trying to talk to me. “It does the job,” I said flatly.

“More than regular vodka would?” There was a teasing tone in his voice. It irked me for some reason.

“Are you gonna keep asking me questions?”

A moment of silence passed, then Butch ‘hmm’ed as if something about what I’d said had confirmed something for him. “Well, seeing as you haven’t been very chatty lately, I just thought I’d try to make some conversation.” He still sounded light and playful.

I took a big gulp this time. I gritted my teeth on its’ way down. “Yeah, well, guess I’m not in the mood to talk.”

“Why not?” Butch tapped his fingers against the bottle he held. The question he asked next was loaded with implication. “Is there something wrong?” There it was. His tone was suddenly dark, knowing, and immediately I knew he’d been leading up to this question the entire time. And I’d strolled right into it.

Unable to stop myself, I turned to stare at him, stone faced. He was already bleakly staring at me, face straight with seriousness, deep emerald eyes looking almost black in the dark.

I uttered the one word, filling it with as much warning as I could. “Don’t.”

He held my gaze, almost like a challenge. Then, slowly, he set the paper-wrapped bottle down next to him and leaned back on his elbows against the hood of his car. “Don’t what?” He used the same tone. The one that told me that I couldn’t worm my way out of this discussion.

I begged to differ. I would do anything to get out of this. Anything. “Just shut up. Okay?” My voice turned sharp as I turned away again. “You’re annoying the hell out of me right now. Just shut up and let me drink.”

“Oh? I’m annoying?”

I took another sip from the bottle. “Yes,” I choked out bluntly after I swallowed.

“So you don’t want me around?” His voice was getting sharper, too. I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my face.

I didn’t answer him. I refused to. Just kept my gaze locked on the surrounding empty parking spaces, jaw clenched. Maybe I could ignore him. Continue taking swigs from that bottle as I watched my life fall apart around me.

In my peripheral, I saw him nod slowly and start to sit up from his reclined position. “So I’m annoying. All right. Too bad.” I still felt his gaze on me, unrelenting. “And what about you?”

The sudden question threw me off, and I actually looked back at him, startled. “What?”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed how distant you’ve been. Do you think I’m stupid? Where have you been lately, huh? Where have you been going?” He tapped his own head roughly with an outstretched finger, two impatient taps against his temple. “You’re not here. Where are you? Where the hell are you?”

“Oh, fuck off.” I turned away from him and tilted my head back, taking another long, bitter swig from the bottle. The burning flowed all the way down. Immediately afterwards, I began scooting off the hood of the car. My feet touched down on the dark pavement, legs buckling, and I began to walk. I had to move away from his proximity. It was starting to make me feel antsy, though I didn’t really know why. My legs felt weak though, thanks to the booze, and walking straight was taking a concentrated effort.

I heard Butch scramble off of the car hood too, and then his footsteps against the ground. “Answer me. Buttercup, look at me. _Hey_ ,” his hand enclosed on one of my hands, trying to get me to face him. It wasn’t rough contact, but it was just enough to piss me off.

I tore my hand away from his. “I swear to God, Butch, don’t touch me.” My words were starting to slur and melt together. I stumbled to the side, my heel coming in crooked contact with the ground. Butch reached out to steady me, and I shoved his hands off my waist, turning to face him. “I said, _don’t touch me!_ ” I shouted.

He jerked back, wide eyes staring at me in disbelief. I had not yelled like that at him in ages, and with so much poison in my voice when I did it. He squinted, not breaking his gaze. “What is _with_ you lately?”

I swiveled away from his gaze again, avoiding it. I couldn’t take the way he was looking at me. If I looked at him any longer, I would start to feel guilty, and I didn’t want to be. “What do you care?” I shot back at him after a few moments. The vodka curling through my mind made it difficult for me to think of a response at first.

Butch sighed impatiently. “Spare me this whole thing, Buttercup, please.”

I looked back at him over my shoulder again, sneering. “What whole thing?”

“Your whole ‘woe is me, no one cares about me’ act that you’ve started putting on with everyone else.” He took another step toward me, scowl sharpening. “It’s not going to work with me, so cut the shit.”

His words had made a lightning bolt of shock course through me, giving me an uncomfortable smack of lucidity through my dizzy daze. I was snarling before I realized it, “Don’t talk to me that way.”

“Don’t talk to you _what_ way? Like I’m your boyfriend?” Through his glare, there was worry underneath. “Like I care about you?”

His last addition, along with the look on his face, made the lightning bolt strike me again, and I turned away once more, tilting the bottle back and taking another gulp to keep the feelings inside me dead. Aimless, I once again began walking away.

Distantly, I heard Butch right on my heels. I didn’t bother turning back around when he spoke this time. “You’ve been snipping and keeping everyone at arm’s length for the past two and a half weeks. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Is this because you’re hurting?”

I screeched to a quick halt at his question. I continued facing forward, reeling from the icy feeling that had crawled up my spine from what he’d said.

“I know this is hard for you. This is hard for all of us. I’ve avoided talking about it, like you wanted me to. But you can only avoid this for so long.” There was fear in his voice.

I whirled on him again, then quickly closed the distance of a foot between us. The glare on my face felt wild and flushed as I said directly in his face, “Shut up.”

He stared down at me, tone rigid as he said, “No. You need to hear this. And if no one else will tell you, then it will be me.” His eyes were unyielding.

Shaking my head, I snapped, “I don’t need to hear shit from you, Butch. Shut the fuck up.”

Breaking his unnatural calm, like a thin thread snapping in half, suddenly he bellowed down at me, “Shutting up won’t make this go away!”

I wheeled away, continuing my journey away from him with wobbly steps. “Stop!”

“Shutting up will only make this worse!” He continued to shout. “Do you really want to die with all of this anger and bitterness inside of you? Do you want people to remember you this way?”

I stopped walking, stooping down to squat near the swirling ground, the energy starting to seep from me and make my legs quake harder. “Shut up! Stop it! Shut up!” I tried to block out what he was saying with my one empty hand.

“Keeping this all in and pushing everyone away will only make you turn into an empty shell!”

I stood quickly, my head swimming and the ground rocking, and after I gained my balance, I stared up into his face, my voice breaking as I screamed back, “I already am!”

He gripped my shoulders, giving me a shake. “Then do something about it!” His dark eyes were bright and afraid. “Don’t you understand how miserable this makes me? All I want to do is help! Stop pushing me away. Let me in!”

I pushed his hands away. I had started to cry. I didn’t know when I had. “I can’t,” I told him through my breaking voice. It rose again. “I _can’t_.”

“Why not?”

My voice was wracked with sobs. “Because if I let you close I’ll only hurt you more when I don’t survive.” The words, irrepressible, tumbled out of me before I could stop them. “You have to stay away from me. I’ll only destroy you. Just get away.”

The words I didn’t say were implied—that if he were to go first, it would destroy me, too. And subconsciously I had been trying to prepare myself for the pain—to prepare us both for the inevitable.

Immediately, in the blink of an eye, the anger and hurt drained from Butch’s face. A calm replaced it as he took in a deep breath and sighed. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he said, voice gentle, with not the slightest hint of regret in it. The tiniest and briefest tug pulled at his mouth—unrepentant.  

Through the haze of upset and alcohol, I stared at him, shaking uncontrollably.

He held a hand out to me, palm open. A truce. “Feel better now?” Slow, he tilted his head to the side. He looked at me softly. “Can we stop?”

Just like that, I stopped. Frowning, and awareness flowing back into my brain, the anger drained out of my body like quicksand. And immediately I realized what I had been doing.

The half empty bottle fell from my hand. Inside the paper bag, it shattered against the ground, spilling the rest of the vodka across the pavement.

He’d done it on purpose. Fought with me so that I’d feel better. He knew how upset and how on edge I had been, and he knew that I couldn’t physically spar to relieve all of my stress because of how weak I’d been. So he’d picked an argument so that not only I’d feel better, but I would also know to stop avoiding him. To take refuge in him. That even though I didn’t want to burden my sisters with my pain, that didn’t mean he wanted the same fate.

He couldn’t take away my pain completely—the alcohol hadn’t, and maybe at this point nothing would—but he would shoulder it, too. Take on my burden with me. Make it not so crushing and oppressive. We would shoulder both of our pain. Together.

Because maybe that was all we had left.

More tears blurred my vision. Unbidden, and stumbling, I closed the distance between us once more—this time, wrapping my arms around his neck as his arms closed around me.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed into his chest, my face buried in the soft cotton of his black shirt. My voice shook with helplessness. “God, Butch. I’m so sorry.”

Butch pulled me snug against him. “We’re okay now, huh? There we go. That’s better.” He turned his face into my hair, smoothing hands across my shoulders and my back as I sobbed harder, hiccupping and choking on my own tears. His cheek pressed against the top of my head. “Shh. Stay with me, Spitfire. I’m right here. I’ll always be.”

In that cold night air after midnight, we stood there for a while, letting the alcohol fade from our systems.

As I continued to weep everything I had kept buried inside of me, feeling my soul cracking and developing fissures, the most beautiful person I had ever known held the pieces of me together so that I wouldn’t fall apart.

* * *

 

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

168.

That was the number of indentations I had counted in the ceiling so far.

Sometimes I lost count. A lot of them looked identical, and I would get them mixed up and accidentally count a few of them two or three times, and I would have to start over. Sometimes a noise would distract me, particularly someone that was trying to talk to me. I would ignore them until they closed my bedroom door again, and then I would start counting again.

I had been playing this game for three weeks now. I found that it helped. It helped keep the spiraling panic and misery away from me. It helped distract me from what was inevitably happening to me and my sisters.

It wasn’t healthy, I knew. But I wasn’t particularly healthy right now either. And now that we all knew that nothing would change the state of our health, what was the point of trying? My body was giving up on itself, and there was nothing I could do. So why even do anything?

So I just kept playing my games. When counting indentations on the ceiling started to grow stale, instead I rolled over onto my side, closed my eyes. Sometimes I would sleep, but when I couldn’t sleep, I thought of scenarios.

Thought of lives that weren’t my own. Imagined lifetimes where I was a dancer in the New York Ballet, lifetimes where I was a world famous fashion model, or a gold medal gymnast. The President, making decisions that changed lives and history forever. Or even just continued my life in the sorority house with my 30 house sisters and Liz. Having spa nights and giant sleepovers in the living room, gossiping and watching movies and laughing until one by one we fell asleep.

I thought up fantastic lives where everything I did or said was perfect, and Boomer was right beside me, and we had the picture perfect life. Nothing would ever be wrong, or hard, or painful. Life would be blissful.

But sometimes I would imagine them too hard, and they would feel so real that I would open my eyes and realize with a jolt of shock that it was all gone. And a lump would rise in the back of my throat and an insatiable ache would grow inside of me when I inevitably realized that it was fake and a life like that would be impossible. That I was dying. That even living my real life wouldn’t be a possibility for me anymore.

So when that happened—as it always inevitably did—I would lie on my back, turn my eyes back to the ceiling and start to count again.

One. Two. Three. Four.

#

One day, however, the counting wasn’t enough for me anymore.

The counting didn’t smother the despair and the writhing loud questions in my head. They didn’t get rid of the pain, the confusion, the hopelessness. And I decided I couldn’t lie there any longer.

That early morning, slowly, I sat upwards in my bed. I sat like that for ten minutes or so, letting my blood flow adjust, letting the dizziness leave my head. Then, one by one, I shifted my legs so that they were dangling off the edge of the bed. Underneath my baggy blue pajama shorts, they were pale, even paler than they would normally be this time of year. White against my pastel blue satin sheets.

I stood slowly, as slow as I could muster, and still my legs buckled. I had barely moved off of my bed for three weeks, only to bathe and hobble up and down the stairs for meals, and my muscles were all protesting. I stood still, flexing my joints to let them get used to my weight on top of them all again.

Once I felt like I was ready to move again, I knelt down next to my bed where there was a large, flat plastic storage box of belongings Professor had brought down from my old room at the sorority house. He had done that for my sisters from their dorm room, too—and then had decontaminated them so that there would be no chance of any of us picking up any outside germs.

Opening it, I reached down inside the clear box, taking out my favorite light blue hoodie. I was cold, so I put it on. The feeling of wearing it helped ground me a little, too—helped me feel as if things were more normal, even if they weren’t, and would never be again.

I stood again, reached for the portable pole that my nighttime Chemical X drip was hanging off of and grasped it, and with it I began to make my slow journey out of my room. I opened the door, left through it, and left my bedroom behind.

The house was still peacefully quiet the way that it always was early in the morning.

I began to make my way past my sister’s bedrooms. Blossom’s bedroom came first, and her hot pink door was cracked open slightly. Through it, I heard the sound of Blossom sleeping, and the sound of Brick next to her on her bed, awake and restless. Staying as quiet as I could, I moved away from her room and further down the hallway, my IV pole wheeling next to me.

I came upon Buttercup’s shut checkered green and black door next. It didn’t surprise me that I didn’t hear Buttercup inside. She and Butch were probably elsewhere, just like she had been the past few weeks. I knew it should’ve concerned me, but I also knew that she would be back when she felt like it. All of us had figured out long ago that Buttercup won’t stay where she doesn’t want to be—even if being in said place was for her wellbeing. Butch would make sure she would be okay, anyhow. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight.

Keeping my face turned away from the next open doorway, I passed the boys’ dark guest room. I knew without looking that it was empty.

I started making my way down the stairs, my hand glued to the railing in a steel grip, my other hand lifting and setting my IV pole down on each step next to my feet. It took some time, but I managed to make it down without fumbling.

Shuffling through the living room and the kitchen, my focus was resolutely fixed on where I was heading. So much that I hadn’t taken a good look of my surroundings.

Just as I was reaching for the knob on the door that lead down to the basement, I heard a voice.

“Where are you off to, Princess?” Boomer.

I turned slowly, and there he was, in the kitchen, sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, mussed and in his pajamas like I was. There was a full, untouched mug of coffee in front of him, but he had his ankles crossed and his arms folded, the way he sits when he falls asleep in a chair. I hadn’t even realized that was where he’d been, although I probably should have guessed that he was awake someplace else when he wasn’t in the guest room.

Hearing his voice had snapped me out of a stupor. “I’m going to talk to Professor,” I said finally in a foggy, soft voice. It felt like it had been ages since I’d even spoken.

Boomer nodded slowly, then blinked at me. He was examining me. When was the last time I had showered? It had to have been days. I probably looked crazy, but I couldn’t bring myself to care lately. He asked me, “Are you all right?”

Of course I wasn’t, but I knew how he meant it. He wanted to know that I wasn’t in pain. And at that moment, I wasn’t. “I’m okay,” I told him. “Just needed to get out of my room for a little while.” I tried to manage a smile, but my face barely moved. I wondered if I even knew what a smile was anymore.

Seeing my change in expression, he returned it. Also not quite a smile, but close to one. “Of course. As long as you’re okay,” he said. His head reclined back, hanging over the back of the chair he sat in, but his gaze never left me. “I’ll be there for you when you get back.”

I nodded at him, then I turned, finally turning the door knob and journeying into the basement where I knew Professor would be, taking my careful journey down stairs once again. Once I made it down, my bare feet made no sound against the freezing tiled floors. The only sound was the wheels of my IV pole squeaking.

When I didn’t hear any sound of movement, I finally called out softly, “Professor?”

There was a moment of continued silence, then a gentle voice responded to mine. “In here, Bubbles.”

I followed where his voice had come from, padding further into the laboratory part of the basement. Hidden on the far end of it was a small office where there was a white desk, along with a white desk chair, endless shelves of thick, heavy books, and a large whiteboard. Sitting at the desk was Professor’s form, his white lab coat disheveled and wrinkled and his head in his hands.

As I walked in, he looked up at me, a wary look in his tired eyes. “Hi, sweetie. Do you need more liquid for your drip? Are you in any pain?” Despite the fear in his voice, I could tell he was trying to stay level-headed. Reassuring. For me.

“No,” I told him right away, doing some of my own reassuring. “I feel okay. Just tired. I just wanted to come talk to you.”

At my reassurance, slight relief crossed his face. “Of course,” he said, then he stood up from his chair and gestured to it. “Here, sit down.”

I went over to sit in his warm desk chair. From it, I looked up at him. He was examining me the same way Boomer had been just minutes earlier. Reluctantly, I asked, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Unconvincingly. My eyebrows rose skeptically. Then he sighed, starting again. “Well, sweetie, I’m relieved to see you. But I’ve just been worried about you. You haven’t been very talkative lately. Well, you’ve barely talked at all lately.” His lips pressed together briefly before he said, “You haven’t been yourself.”

I nodded, taking in what he said. Then I half shrugged. “Do you really expect me to be?” I asked, my tone gentle despite the meaning the words carried.

“No.” After a moment, Professor shook his head. “I suppose not.”

A couple more seconds passed, and I decided to change the subject. “So, what have you been doing down here all night?” I didn’t have to ask him beforehand if he’d been down here all night, getting no sleep. It was obvious in his bloodshot eyes, and the bags underneath them. His whole face was wan and exhausted.

Professor drew in a long breath, then sighed. “More research, as usual. I thought I’d found a good lead, but then I got stuck.” He didn’t seem to be willing to offer up more information than that.

I nodded once, moving on to my next question. “Have your leads been good so far?”

“Yes,” he said. “And no.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that nonspecific answer. But maybe it was better that I didn’t know.

The next question weighed heavy on me. The last question I really wanted, needed, the answer to. After pondering for a bit if I should ask, I decided to ask anyway, figuring I was ready for whatever I was about to hear. “How long?” I asked.

From the heavy pause that came from Professor, I knew that he knew exactly what I was asking him. He hesitated, a frown on his face and solemnity in his eyes. He hesitated so long I didn’t think he was ever going to answer. Then he drew in a breath and said, his release of each word slow and careful, “At your current rate of decline…I would say two months. At the very most.” He blinked, finally meeting my gaze again. “But it might be closer to a month and a half.”

I held Professor’s gaze for a long time, letting that soak in. Then I looked at the ground. A minute or two passed without either of us saying anything.

I was the one to break the quiet. “You know what I used to wish when I was young?” I asked him suddenly, the question springing to my lips.

Professor seemed as started by my sudden question as I was. Then, very faintly, a smile. “What was it?”

I closed my eyes, remembering. “I used to wish every night that you could invent a way to give yourself superpowers.” I opened my eyes again, looking back up at him. “I never told you this, but I wanted you to be a superhero, too. I wanted you to join us in battles and help us save the world.”

Professor released a breath that was nearly a chuckle. His weak smile remained, though it still didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s adorable.”

I went on. “You were always my hero, Professor. Even before now. But in a way, my wish has come true. Now, in your own way, you’re the only superhero left among all of us.”

All at once, Professor’s face smile left his face as it drained of blood. Slight, weak amusement turned into fear almost instantly.

“It’s up to you now,” I told him. I reached toward him, taking one of his hands. I held them in between mine, looking up into his pale face with grave sincerity. “There’s nothing that we can do to help ourselves. It’s up to you. You’re the only one that can rescue us.”

He still didn’t look at me. His hand trembled.

“Promise me you’ll never give up. Tell me you’ll keep trying. No matter what happens.” I gripped his hand tighter, the tone of my voice imploring. “We’re counting on you, Professor. You’re our last hope. Promise me.”

Finally, Professor turned his eyes to me again. And though the fear hadn’t left his face, his eyes were stronger. Still held some will in them. Very slowly, he nodded. “I promise.”

With the words that I had wanted to hear leaving his mouth, something tightly knit released in me. Leaning forward in the chair, I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his lab coat. No matter what, I’d needed to hear that Professor wouldn’t give up on us. That was all I needed to hear. “I believe in you,” I told him, voice muffled against him. “And I love you. No matter what.”

Professor didn’t answer, but his arms wound around me tightly. And I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard him trying not to cry.

#

Much later, after I eventually went back up the basement steps and left the lab, Boomer wasn’t in the kitchen anymore.

I wandered back up the second-story stairs, ventured back to the hallway. He wasn’t in the guest room, either. But when I made it back to my bedroom, there he was. Sprawled across my bed, chest rising and falling as he slept.

At the sight of him, for the first time in days, surprising me as it came, a genuine smile crossed my lips.

As quietly as I could, I went into my bathroom and shut the door. Carefully disconnecting my drip from my arm, I disrobed from my pajamas and took a relaxing, warm shower. After getting out of the shower, drying myself, and slipping into my fuzzy blue bathrobe, I came out of the bathroom. As soon as I walked through the door and back into my bedroom, I saw him sitting up on my bed, awake.

Taking in my newly clean, slightly damp appearance, he smiled at me. Automatically, completely unable to control it, I smiled back. “Hey,” he greeted in a soft voice. “Told you I’d be here for you when you got back.”

I made my way closer to my bed. “I know,” I replied. “Thanks for keeping your promise.”

His face softened, sobering. “I’ll always be here for you. You know that,” his eyes locked with mine, “Right?”

All I did was nod, as once again, the smile came back. The real one that only he could seem to give me, even when just a little while ago I thought I wouldn’t be able to smile again.

“Good,” he said. Then he scooted over on my bed, patting the space next to him. “Come nap with me?”

I climbed up on the bed, then I curled into his side as his arm came around me. He didn’t say anything more, and neither did I. My eyes closed. Our breathing slowed, became even.

And as I had so many times before, I drifted off to dream land in his arms. In the dream I had, I dreamed of a place, a time, where not everything was perfect—but it was good. Things were good, and I was given the incredible privilege of normalcy. The gift of waking up in the morning, going to school, and then saving the day with my sisters.

I dreamt of paradise.


	18. Born to Die

**Chapter Seventeen**

_“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.” –Leo Tolstoy_

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

Everything surrounding us was still frozen.

These days, my sisters and I had become subjected to mostly observing the outside world through the windows of our home. Though things outside should have cheered us up to an extent, there was no modicum of happiness outdoors. The sky was slate grey. Plants and grass on the ground were still dried and shriveled up, trees’ branches still barren and knobby. The cold kept any of our neighbors from spending much time at all out in the frigid air.

Everything dead. No signs of things ever coming back to life. Considering what we were dealing with now, it only seemed fitting that the world outside still looked like this.

Things lately had been bleak.

My sisters and I had begun to lose our appetites. The voracious, empty hunger I had nearly always felt in the morning had started to wane. It lessened to the point of only wanting a few bites of food before I already felt full. When I continued to bite and chew, it felt like chewing wet cement.

For about two days, or three, the three of us tried to eat anyway to satiate any worries Professor and the boys had. But eventually, we told them what was going on with our appetites. They told us to continue to try to eat. To do our best to get the food down. So we continued to try.

Several days later, one morning, after Bubbles forced down breakfast, she barely made it to the bathroom in time before it all started to come back up. Having scarcely eaten anything and not being affected, Buttercup and I jumped from the table and ran after her. I was the first to make it to the bathroom, and I slid to a stop in the doorway at the sight of Bubbles bent over the toilet seat.

Slowly, she turned her head in my direction, her blue eyes wide. Her hands clutched the white porcelain seat in a vice grip. She said in a quiet, scared voice, “…Blossom?”

Hearing Buttercup approaching behind me, I quickly broke from the door frame and came to Bubbles. When I stood behind her, I immediately halted, immobilized, my eyes locked down on the toilet bowl in horror.

The chewed bits of food were drenched in black.

From the great reduction in appetite, and then this new obstacle of _rejecting_ some foods, the three of us began to lose weight.

It wasn’t quite noticeable yet, but with Professor keeping constant record of our weights along with other important details he monitored every day, he made sure to tell us. He said he would start us on a nutrient drip soon, so that at least we could get the nutrients we needed and we wouldn’t feel so weak. As he told us this, I wondered, silently, if it would ever be possible to not feel this weak ever again.

But I didn’t voice this question aloud. I didn’t dare.

On the other hand, the boys’ health had begun to decline as well.

Headaches and nose bleeds became frequent for them. Nightly Chemical X drips, as we had been getting, became a requirement for them too. The Professor asked them to sleep in the basement hospital ward a few nights a week so he could keep close watch on their declination and symptoms. Their appetite hadn’t been touched yet—but we knew it wouldn’t be too far off.

One day, early March, after the boys had eaten dinner and my sisters and I had two or three bites of chicken soup before we gave up, the six of us gathered in the mostly dark living room, just one lamp lit across the room. Professor left us to our own devices, departing back down to his laboratory dungeon. All six of us, instead of trying to squish onto the small white couch, opted to sit on the floor instead.

We all sat in a circle. Sitting this way reminded me of Thanksgiving, when we’d sat on the floor just like this, playing a board game with not a care in the world. The sick sense of irony hadn’t missed any of us—there was a thick uneasiness filling the entire room as we settled down onto the floor.

We had agreed to all come in here to have a discussion. But as soon as we sat, the room teemed with silence. No one said anything. We just sat on the carpet, avoiding each other’s gazes, avoiding the inevitable agony having this discussion would bring.

The time for all of us to release the most unutterable things had come.

Brick was the first to finally break the grave muteness that had overcome all of us. “Well,” he started, folding his arms and taking the time to look at each of us. “Let’s just get this over with. Someone has to break the ice, and it looks like it has to be me. So, here it is: We’re all gonna be dead soon because of the very thing that we’re made of.” He halted, looking up at the ceiling as if saying those words had physically pained him. “I don’t know about you guys…but does this make sense to any of you?”

“It makes no sense,” Boomer answered his brother, eyes and voice hollow.

“At all,” Butch finished. His low voice was tinged with wrath—it matched his tempestuous eyes.

“I feel like I’m going crazy,” Brick continued, his voice raising with panic and frustration. He looked at all of us again, crimson eyes wide. “Am I dreaming? Is any of this real? Am I losing my mind?”

I answered him next, voice calm. “I wish I could tell you that this was some fever induced nightmare,” I told him. “Believe me. I’ve wished it a hundred times.”

Bubbles said to me, “You’re not the only one.” I risked a glance at her. I couldn’t handle her drained expression for more than a second or two. It was the polar opposite of her usual sweet youthful brightness. It made her look years older. I looked away.

Brick started again, his voice filled with the same frustration. “If we were just going to fall apart, if we were just going to end like this…what were we even doing here in the first place? Why even exist at all?” His hands folded behind his neck, the way he always did when he tried to calm himself down. I watched his eyelids slide shut, watched him try to breathe slowly.

Boomer, boldly, was the one to answer his seemingly rhetorical questions, staring at his brother under a heavy brow and the tangle of his light hair. “I guess anyone could ask themselves that. Even humans.”

Startling us all with the sound of her voice for the first time since this discussion started, drawing all of our taken aback gapes to her, Buttercup remarked through a clenched jaw, “At least humans weren’t made in a lab.” All of us blinked at her for a few seconds, shocked at both her unexpected contribution and the words she’d said. She had conformed to our group discussion plan, but she had settled down in her spot on the carpet tense and hostile, like a coiled cobra. I knew it would only be a matter of time before she would strike.

After the moment of surprise passed, Butch countered, leaning back on his palms, “At least _you_ weren’t made in a prison cell.”

“The _toilet_ of a prison cell,” Brick corrected him, the slightest bit of a shadowy grin on his lips. Then a moment passed and it disappeared, his lips twisting downward into a grimace again. The brief moment of the group’s amusement abruptly faded as well, giving way to the grim atmosphere once more.

Silence choked the room again.

This feeling, this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness pressing in on everyone on all sides, had been something that hadn’t gotten any easier to bear. It wasn’t any normal kind of sadness—it was grief. It was the grief of six people who knew their time was nearly up, that there was nothing that they could do about it.

We grieved for ourselves, for each other. We grieved what basically had already been lost.

I didn’t know if it was the despondent mood in the house, or the reality of our circumstances crushing in on me, but the confession came out from its buried place deep inside of me for the first time since the afternoon that Professor had said it to me. “You know we’re sterile, right?” Met with stark silence and stares from all of them, I elaborated, “We’re all sterile. Professor told me that a few months ago. I didn’t know before, but…” I trailed off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. “Even if we were to live long enough, none of us would ever have children. Our bodies are too hostile of an environment to hold life in them.” I paused, the air inside me heavy. I looked at all of their stunned faces, seeing them processing this new information. Then came out the hefty question that had secretly festered in me ever since the revelation of this knowledge. “What are we?”

“We’re science experiments,” said Brick, not wasting even one second to answer me. His voice was cold. Stark. “That’s all we are, and that’s all we’ll ever be.”

I couldn’t say I disagreed with him. And to be perfectly honest, I think I’d been thinking this answer all along, somewhere deep inside of me. I’d just been too terrified to face it.

Choosing to build upon my question, Boomer spoke next, his once normally calm eyes now hard and pensive and distant. “We’re the only ones of our kind. We have no hope of reproducing. So what happens when we’re gone?”

“What do you mean, ‘our kind’?” Butch refuted with a hard dry laugh. Boomer looked at him cuttingly, obviously feeling slighted. Butch went on in a disparaging manner, “There is no ‘our kind’. Do you think we’re some sort of species? We’re not even technically alive!”

I held up a hand, trying to de-escalate the oncoming argument between them. “Now, I wouldn’t say that,” I cut in. Dry, I added, “We’re not dead yet.”

Butch shot back at me, meeting my eyes across the circle sharply, “Yeah, but we’re gonna be. And how do you think we’ll be buried? Like saints? No. We’ll be as good as toxic waste in the ground.” At what he’d said, my throat tightened. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

“Don’t say that,” Bubbles said to Butch in a brittle voice.

"It’s true, though,” Brick replied. His voice was much calmer now. But it was calm to the point of near emotionlessness. He said brusquely, “We’re synthetic. We were never meant to be here on this planet, like the rest of the living, organic beings here. We aren't made of carbon like them. We won't turn to dust when we die. We'll just disintegrate into toxic black mush.”

As I listened to his answer, feeling the hollow aching in me grow, I realized he was right. It was something I had never thought of, even despite every other torturous thought I’d had lately, but as soon as he said it, it’d made sense.

It never had occurred to me that we were something that was against nature itself, but by definition, that was what we were. What we always would be. My throat stung—I tried to force it back down, steeling myself against the urge to cry.

Breaking the stillness, Buttercup spoke up again. “What are we really here for?” Her tone was icy. Hostile. We all turned our gazes to her. “If we're not human, what is the point? What is our purpose?"

After clearing my throat, I answered her, trying to sound leveled and calm once again. “We’re super heroes. We’re meant to protect people.” It was the only way I knew how to respond. It was the only answer I’d ever known, the answer to everything I had based my entire life around. The answer I had to cling to.

She snorted in disdain, obviously displeased with my answer. “Yeah. Right. To protect those humans that hate us and look at us like we’re some freakish anomaly. Half the time they didn’t even appreciate what we did for them, always found something to pick at or complain about or accuse us of.” She folded her arms, aiming a muted glare at me. “Some purpose.”

Something inside of me soured at her use of the past tense. ‘What we _did_ for them’ instead of ‘what we _do_ for them’. Why did that bother me so much to hear? It wasn’t like it wasn’t true.

Brick commented, “They never quite understood us, did they?” He paused, looking up from staring at his socked feet. “We were always outsiders to them.”

I said, “Maybe we never quite understood them, either.” I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Achingly. “Not until now.”

“Not until it was too late,” added Brick, bleak.

Bubbles, out of nowhere, asked all of us, “What if we weren’t dying?” The rest of us, staring, waited for her to elaborate, startled at her sudden question. She went on, “I mean, what if we weren’t dying, but we would never have superpowers again and were just like humans?” An even longer pause passed as we continued to stare at her. “What would we even be doing with our lives then? Who would we be?”

Silence stretched on as all of us considered this new, almost taboo question. It was a question I had never dared to let myself think, and I was sure that everyone else felt that way, too. But this would have been our reality if our bodies weren’t destroying themselves, so it would have been something we’d have had to deal with.

Almost half a minute passed before I was the one to scrounge up the courage to answer her first. “I’d be a scientist.” Slowly, I added with the ghost of a weak grin on my lips, “Just like Professor.”

“I’d open up a bakery,” Bubbles said next. There was a sad sort of smile on her face, too. I thought of the hundreds of cakes and the amazing cupcakes she’d made during middle school, high school and the years since. I didn’t have an ounce of doubt that her bakery would have been nothing short of a city-wide sensation—maybe country-wide.

Butch was the next to speak, not smiling at all, but staring off as if imagining something. “I’d have my own garage. Restore old cars, make them like new.” A tinge of resentment touched his last sentence.

“I’d be an artist,” Boomer said after his brother, then shrugged a little emptily. “I don’t know what kind I would be. Guess I would’ve had to figure that out first.”

“Whatever kind of art you’d do, you would be wonderful at it,” Bubbles said to him softly. She reached toward his hand to squeeze it. He squeezed her hand back, offering her a small soft, grateful grin.

Another beat passed before Brick finally admitted, after I prodded him with my gaze, “I’d be a coach. Or a teacher.” Pause. “Maybe a professor.”

The rest of us slowly turned to look at Buttercup, who had been silent since the subject of conversation had changed. Seeing all of us looking at her, she heaved a tired sigh. “Is this for real? Are we really doing this right now?”

“Yes,” I replied bluntly, not liking her attitude. We were all being honest and open here. That was what this group discussion was for. She had been slightly honest too, for a few short moments. Why wasn’t she willing to answer this one hypothetical question?

Buttercup rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Fine. I’ll play along with this little game of make believe.” Her head lolled to the side as she sighed again, this one longer and more drawn out. Then, in a subdued voice, she said, “I would have my own dojo. I would either be a Wing Chun instructor or a Taekwondo one.” She looked directly at me, raising her eyebrows dryly. “Happy?”

Strongly feeling like anything I said would just provoke her further, I said nothing, only blinked at her with a carefully vacant expression.

Boomer spoke next, thankfully changing the subject. “You know, those creatures we fought in November—the ones with the three circles on them…we’re just like them. They were made of something almost like Chemical X, and then they disintegrated. And now we’re doing the same thing. Did you ever think…” he trailed off. Paused heavily. Then cautiously, he asked us, “What made them the ‘monsters’ when in reality, they were just like us? Doesn’t that make us monsters, too?”

Like a scene from a film, the battle between us and the 50 white monsters in Townsville Park played through my head as clearly as if it had just happened. I thought of how we took each creature down, one by one, as if they were ants. Ripping them to literal pieces like they were cardboard. Like they were trash. Like they were nothing. The image of myself ripping one of them in half with my own bare hands was particularly prominent. Thick, opaque black gushing through my fingers and running down my forearms—the same black that now came out of my nose and out of my stomach.

Then, the memory skipped forward—I thought of the way that the remaining monster army had all died by themselves, dropping down to the earth one by one. The flying ones falling out of the sky, not unlike how Buttercup had fallen out of the sky as we were fighting Him’s nightmarish illusions.

The most vivid image I had from the end of the big Townsville Park battle was the gaunt, fanged, four-legged creature that had fallen down dead on the ground right next to Brick and I. Tiny black eyes sightless. Black pouring out of its’ throat and onto the dead grass like a fountain. Dead before it probably even realized it.

Brick was the one to respond to Boomer’s question to us all, cynicism coating every word. “We’re not human, that’s for damn sure.”

I thought now of how it felt to watch all the creatures die. To watch them just fall to the ground as if they had never even moved. “Why did we think we were above them when we were just like them?” I asked the group in general, my voice sounding withdrawn. Defeated. “What gave us the right to believe that?”

“Stop. We are _not_ like them,” Brick disputed, “you know that. We’re not monsters. Maybe we’re made of Chemical X similar to theirs, sure. But we have the conscience to realize when we’re doing right and wrong. We have the awareness, the choice. They were programmed to kill. That’s all that they were for. They didn’t even have self-awareness. They were just biological robots.”

“You mean like we used to be?” Butch asked his brother after a moment.

Brick turned to look at him, shaking his head and scowling. “No. Not the same thing.”

“How?” Butch stared at him, eyes severe. “Mojo created us and brainwashed us to destroy the Utonium sisters. How is that any different? How could we know—know for _sure_ —that the monsters wouldn’t have eventually developed the way we did—the way we developed our own personalities, our own goals?”

Brick didn’t answer his brother—he didn’t seem to even want to. He just stared down at the floor, silent.

Boomer continued in the vein of where his brother had left off, sounding haunted. “And what gave us the right to take that small, minute chance of development away from them? We saw _them_ as evil, but objectively, isn’t what we did evil, too?”

“No.” Bubbles was shaking her head, already rejecting the very idea. “Don’t even say that. Those things aren’t the same.”

“How do you know?” Boomer was staring at her, his gaze desperate. His voice had risen slightly, not with disagreement, but with fear. He seemed to want to believe her more than anything.

She met his fear with assurance. “Because we were protecting all those humans in the city,” she answered, frowning and sounding one-thousand percent sure of herself. “We were protecting all of them because they can’t protect themselves. And that could never be evil. Never.”

Once, I would have immediately agreed with what Bubbles said, without question. But these days things that I had once thought I had understood made no sense to me anymore. Up was down, right was left. And I was living, but all I could think about was death.

I said to the room, moving the subject along after the uneasiness had gotten too thick, “Even if we’re more like humans than those things were, humans have an average life expectancy of 70 years. We didn’t even get 20.”

Everyone let this fact sink in. I could almost hear the words echoing inside everyone’s heads. _Not even 20. Not even 20. Not even 20._

Who would’ve thought that the Powerpuff Girls and Rowdyruff Boys would only live to be 19? Not me. Not anybody.

Butch said next, breaking through my increasingly spiraling thoughts, “I feel like something out there is laughing at us.” He paused with a bitter, twisted smirk that was at odds with the resentment in his eyes. “Hell, probably the whole Internet is. Those keyboard monkeys. I hate them all.”

“They’d probably come in here and destroy us themselves if they could,” Buttercup muttered. Then she added, cynicism practically dripping from her dry lips, “If only they really knew what was happening now.”

Our disappearance from the public eye had not gone unnoticed. It started out as small, quiet theories on the Internet—then it expanded, leaving the Internet and moving to word of mouth, and by then, the media train had gone off the rails again.

It turned out that the seemingly harmless, jaded counter girl at Pop’s Ice Cream & Gelato hadn’t been so harmless after all—days after my public nosebleed incident, security cam footage of it found its’ way online. I was clearly visible in it, as was Brick, and so were the thin black rivers running out of my nostrils and dripping off of my face. Within a week, the footage had gone viral—80 million views worldwide.

Things had spiraled rapidly out of control, quicker than we could manage it. We couldn’t go a day without being part of some new sensationalist headline about why the Powerpuff Girls and Rowdyruff Boys hadn’t been seen in weeks—why my nose had been dripping black.

So, knowing any excuse we could come up with wouldn’t have been believed anyway, not this time, we did the next best thing—we hid.

Professor kept the televisions shut off these days, and our Internet-accessible devices were banned from use, rendering them all into nothing more than black mirrors. As well, we stayed indoors exclusively now, with all the drapes on the windows closed. If anything at all, once in a while we could go out into the fenced backyard for a short time, if we were quiet and didn’t attract attention. But the news vans parked across the street from our house were enough of a motivator to not leave through the front door.

What was once our asylum had become our vacuum-sealed tomb.

Boomer was the one to answer Buttercup after another long beat of no one saying anything. “It’s better that they don’t know for now,” he said. I didn’t think any of us could disagree. After all, it couldn’t stay secret for much longer. One way or another, the truth would come out.

Unprovoked, Bubbles commented to Buttercup and I, almost conversationally except for the emptiness in her voice, “You know, it’s our birthday soon. In a month and a half.”

Buttercup coughed, and it almost sounded like a laugh. It was probably meant to be one. “We’ll never make it that long,” she muttered.

Bubbles blinked at Buttercup, then she asked no one in particular, her face pinched and her voice quivering, “Is this what we deserve for wanting to just live normally? To live at least a little bit like everyone else?” Her last question came out the quietest. “Do we deserve to die this way?”

“Maybe,” replied Brick. There was another heavy silence at his answer. He continued, almost wryly, “Maybe we’re just immoral scientific experiments that were never supposed to exist as long as we have. Maybe we’re just living proof that playing God in a laboratory is fucked up.”

I couldn’t explain why, but irrational anger flared through me at what he’d said. Immediately, I disputed, “But that’s not what Professor was doing. We were an accident.”

Buttercup immediately cut in. “Somehow that makes it even worse.” She stopped for a moment, a strange look crossing her carefully impassive face momentarily, then she added, “I mean, you have to admit it, we’ve lasted pretty long for a bunch of mistakes.” She hooted once. A loud, humorless, angry laugh. I stared at her, not answering. Bubbles fell into a quiet.

“What about Mojo, then?” Boomer’s voice was dreary as he asked it, as if he already knew the answer. “What does that make him?”

“He was playing God, that’s for sure.” Brick had an almost humorous look on his face. Maybe it would have been humorous if it weren’t for the rage that remained in his stormy ruby eyes. “He always thought himself to be a god, the furry bastard. He probably thought he was creating some sort of revolutionary creatures when he made us. Little did he know what messes we would turn out to be.”

“Understatement,” Butch said vacantly.

We all agreed to stop for a few minutes, dispersing and taking a break to leave to get water, use the restroom and give our emotions a rest for a time. After maybe ten minutes, we reconvened in the living room, gathering back in our circle, sitting down in our same spots. The break would prove to be needed, considering the conversations that immediately followed.

Almost as soon as we had settled down again, Butch abruptly blurted out to us, “Remember when I tried to kill myself? In high school?”

Everyone froze. Dark silence pulsed for a moment or two. The room palpably churned with discomfort.

It was not something any of us liked to bring up. That time in our lives was controversial for all of us, and complicated. Junior year of high school was what ended up bringing all of us together, but the means had been very difficult and painful for everybody.

For Butch, trying to stay out of Buttercup’s life had been so difficult, so impossible, that he had attempted to end his own life with a gun to his head. Even knowing back then that a bullet wouldn’t have killed him, he had still tried. Buttercup was the one who had kept the attempt from unfolding—had literally slapped the gun out of his hand—and over the top as it was, it was what finally led the two to be together, the realization that staying apart would kill them both.

Buttercup never talked about it. I think that it still terrified her to think about, even now. So that was what made her answering him before anybody else did all the more surprising. “I could never forget that day.” It was the first time any emotion had leaked into her carefully composed voice since this whole discussion had started.

It was low, underneath the surface, but it was there—old, pungent burden. The sound of it stunned the rest of us into respectful soundlessness. Instead of saying anything, I watched the way Buttercup’s eyes had locked onto the fluff of the white carpet beneath her, the way her muscles had stiffened up. The way she was staring—it was almost like she was seeing through it.

Maybe the slightest reminder caused her to relive those moments all over again. Maybe that was why she never talked about it.

Butch continued uneasily, face pensive. “I never really…thought about death. As a possibility. If it had actually worked. It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s true.” Between every other sentence, his furrowed brow would twitch as he stopped, in deep thought. And as he did, it occurred to me that this was maybe the first time he had talked so openly about this. “That day, I was so out of my mind with sorrow that I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking about what dying would’ve really been like. About what would happen afterwards.” He shook his head then, as if snapping himself out of a reverie. His teeth clenched together as he said, “but I didn’t know sorrow then. I thought I did. But I had no idea.” His lip curled, bitterness passing over his face.

I knew Buttercup wouldn’t reply this time, especially with the far away, vacant look in her eyes now, so I did instead. “To be fair, none of us have ever had to think about it. Not this way.” I let out a soundless sigh. “I suppose that’s why we’ve been so unprepared. All of us.” My mind went briefly to Professor. Slaving away down in the laboratory, inventing more solutions for our snowballing health issues and looking for a cure that we all knew likely didn’t exist.

When Butch spoke again, not necessarily responding to me but speaking to everyone, the strangest look was on his face. It looked like it was caught between fear and…guilty hope. “I wonder what it will feel like.” He looked up, looking at each of us in our spots in the pow-wow. “Do you think we’ll be lucky enough to just fall asleep and never wake up?”

All of us stared back at him, collectively terrified at even answering his question.

A few more beats passed, then Butch said, “Sorry. Shouldn’t have asked that.” The strange expression—the fear and the hope—had immediately left his face. His usual guarded one replaced it. “Just forget I said that.”

I shook my head at him, even though I still felt the remaining, prickly echoes of shock at what he’d said. “Don’t be sorry.” If anything, besides shock, I was also weirdly, morbidly gratified in a way that someone else had asked such a question. It made me realize that I wasn’t the only one thinking of questions like that.

“It was a perfectly reasonable question. Even a great one.” Boomer, who was next to him, reassured his brother. He reached to gently pat his shoulder. “It’s just that I don’t know if anyone has the guts to answer it.”

Butch nodded slowly in dour understanding, his lips pressed together in a tight line. He fell back into a stony silence.

Brick, likely feeling the change in his brother’s demeanor, changed the subject once more. “Here’s another question to consider. Do any of you think there’s a heaven? Not just for humans, but also for things like us?” He switched his gaze to each of us in the circle, one by one. “Let’s just say there is a God out there. Do you think he gives a shit about our existence?”

Discomfort passed through the circle yet again. “I don’t think now’s the right time for Sunday school talk,” Buttercup commented with the same dryness that she had used before Butch’s confession.

“Come on. I’m serious.” Brick paused, looking at all of us again. “Admit it. Haven’t you ever wondered?”

I replied, “No. I guess I never have.” I halted. Then I swallowed hard as I admitted, reluctant, “Maybe I was too afraid to.” Religions of any kind had never been of interest to me. But I had to admit that, at this point in time, Brick’s question intrigued me. It also terrified me. It terrified me so much that I buried it, hoping it would never return.

Boomer asked the next unspeakable question. “Do you think we have souls?”

“Of course we do,” Bubbles said to him softly. Her voice was bleak. There was barely any light left in her eyes. But even still, she continued arguing for our very existence. “If we didn’t, how would we be able to feel? We feel things just like anyone else. Anger. Sadness.” She paused, regarding all of us one by one. “Love.”

“Hormones,” Brick cut in flatly. “All different chemical balances in the brain. Illusions. Emotions don’t actually exist.”

Bubbles leveled her dull blue-eyed gaze at him across the circle. She tightened her arms around her knees, and she turned up her chin at him. “I don’t agree,” she simply said.

“Okay, but it’s not a matter of agreeing and not agreeing,” Brick argued with her, frustrated, “it’s scientific fact.”

Bubbles replied again, tone unruffled, “I don’t agree that it’s fact.”

I turned to stare at Brick. I felt incredulity spread across my features. “Do you really believe in that, Brick?” I asked him.

He turned his annoyed gaze from my sister and turned to me, wary, quirking up one eyebrow. “In what?”

“In what you just said.” My eyes narrowed slightly, regarding him uneasily now. “That emotions don’t really exist.”

“It’s science, Blossom. It’s fact. You understand,” said Brick. He held my gaze impassively. “Don’t you believe that, too?”

I held his gaze, frowning and shaking my head in answer. Where had this come from suddenly? Did he honestly believe something like that? Even knowing what we felt for each other? I believed in science. One-thousand percent, I did. But I also believed in love. And he was the one who made me believe in it.

“No?”

“No,” I said.

He paused for a long time, holding my gaze even longer, the annoyance gradually fading and being exchanged with an empty sort of despair. “Then maybe I don’t know,” he finally admitted. He gave a short, stiff shake of his head, and his eyes dropped to the ground, releasing mine and becoming blank. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

At the unnervingly out of character appearance of surrender on his face, my heart gave one rough, unmerciful heave. Slowly, I scooted closer to him, stretching my hand out to meet his and take it gently. I lifted it to press a gentle kiss there, comforting and soft on the back of his hand. Saying nothing, I held his hand between both of mine, hoping he heard more from me with this simple action than with anything I could’ve said.

Maybe none of us really knew anything for sure anymore. What we had always known to be true, our very ways of life, had begun to fall apart at the seams. But maybe it had been presumptuous of us to think that we had life all figured out, anyway.

Human or non-human. No one ever really has things figured out. Maybe it was for the best that we finally realized this now.

Another natural lull in the group’s conversation stalled, and during the silence, Buttercup shifted. She reached into the pocket of her sweatpants for something, and pulled it out. A small box of cigarettes. At the sight of it, my stomach clenched in cold astonishment. Where had that come from? Next, she reached into her other pocket and pulled out a lime green colored lighter.

I was unable to stop the question from erupting out of me. “Buttercup, since when do you smoke?” I’d asked it a little sharper than I’d intended.

Buttercup took out a single cigarette from the box, putting it between her lips and letting it hang there. She flicked the lighter on, a small flame coming from it, and lit the end of the cigarette. She replied tersely, the cigarette bobbing on her bottom lip as she spoke, “Since recently. I’ve been doing it for a while, you’ve just never seen me do it. Seeing as we’re imprisoned these days, though, I really have no other choice but to do it in here now.” She put the lighter away and took a long, careful first drag.

Buttercup had never smoked before. Why was she doing it now? Of _all times_ , why now? I watched the end of the cigarette light up as she dragged, staring at it like it was diseased. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but the sight of it had made me so furious. I asked aloud, flummoxed, “Why?”

As she spoke this time, smoke flowed from her mouth like a veil, fanning out over her face in a sheer curtain and then undulating towards the ceiling. “Why the hell not? I’m dead anyway.” She looked at me, green eyes as vaguely challenging as they were dull. She took another drag and then said, smoke flowing, “Try and stop me, Red. Take it out of my hand. Go ahead. I dare you.”

My jaw worked as I held her gaze for a few more seconds, then I dropped my eyes away from her, angry and fed up. I shook my head in disgust. “You are unbelievable.” My heart was racing in its’ slow, human-like way.

She sputtered another choke laugh. “Am I?” She took yet another drag, leisurely and indifferent.

I was trembling. I continued, my anger increasing and the volume of my voice growing with each word, “You know something? You are really unpleasant these days. I’ve been doing everything I can to avoid you, just like you’ve been doing. Your negativity makes me feel even sicker than I already am.”

Bubbles’ interjected, voice shaking with her hurt, “Stop! Don’t fight!”

Buttercup, ignoring Bubbles, laughed another choking laugh at me, even louder and even more scornful. “Oh? Well, excuse me for not feeling like I had to be fake and peppy when I’m _dying_ ,” she said the word with such force and poison that it echoed in the quiet room. It made me flinch. She partially folded her hands together in a mocking pleading gesture, her eyes wild with her growing unhinged temper. “I’m so sorry, Queen Blossom. How would you like me to act? Optimistic? Like a saint? Or would you prefer that I pretend like nothing is wrong, like you’ve been doing? Cleaning the house up and making everything perfect? Is that what you want?”

Butch had partially gotten up from the floor, poised to cross over to her. He warned, “Buttercup, stop. Right now.”

“Take it easy,” Brick said to her at the same time. Incredulity and outrage was plain on his face, like he couldn’t believe she was erupting out of the blue like this. But I had seen it coming. Anticipated it from the very moment we had sat in this circle. It had taken longer to build up than I’d thought, and she had gone straight from avoidance to lashing out quicker than I’d thought that she would, but nevertheless it had been inevitable. With the way she’d been isolating herself from the majority of us lately, it was bound to happen eventually.

Buttercup acted like they hadn’t even spoken. In one fluid gesture, she lifted her pant leg and snuffed out her cigarette against her knee as if it didn’t even hurt her, leaving a bright red scorch mark on her bare pale skin. Then she hurled the unlit bud directly at me.

Shock rippled through the room and the others shouted, and I turned my face away as the cigarette came sailing towards my face and hit me on the cheek. The circle dismantled all at once. Butch rushed up behind her, grabbing her by her shoulders and keeping her in place. Brick was suddenly next to me, arm around my shoulders and half between me and her, protective stance in full effect. I felt Bubbles on my other side, kneeling, ready to separate us if she had to, mirroring Boomer’s exact ready stance on Buttercup’s side.

I kept my eyes away from Buttercup as she continued her rant, voice becoming louder and louder, “Tell me what you want, Blossom. Tell me which neat little spotless glass box you want to lock me up inside. Tell me all about how you would like me to be, since you’ve been doing that for our entire lives already. Tell me, oh _great leader_ , how perfectly pristine you would like for me to act. How clean and prim and goddamn _chipper_ you’d like me to be, the way a _Powerpuff Girl_ is supposed to be.”

Very slowly, I shook my head. “Stop now,” I said. My voice was barely a whisper. Her words were like knives all over me, sinking deeper and deeper. “Please.”

Buttercup, with Butch’s hands still restraining her by her shoulders, stood up and stalked over to me with him in tow behind her, her eyes staring down at me like they wanted to tear through me. Boomer stood as well, rushing to stand between us, his hands open toward her and forcing her to stop. Stop she did, but she never even glanced at him—on a mission, her menacing glower remained on me.

Like a speeding train coming off of its’ tracks, tumbling and folding and imploding on itself, she railed ahead at a deafening volume, bellowing, “Well guess what, Red? You can take all of your crazy, impossible, neurotic expectations of our perfect superhero lives and shove them up your ass. Because within a small amount of time, the Powerpuff Girls are not going to exist anymore. They are going to die. They are going to become a speck of dust in the vast, sprawling universe. And in the end, nobody is going to remember how _perfect_ we acted, and how _flawless_ our image was in the media, and how _lovely_ we were. For a small amount of time, they’re going to remember some girls and boys with superpowers that saved people now and then. But in a hundred years, none of that is even going to matter. All the people who loved us will be dead and long gone. We’ll just be one sentence, or maybe two, in some kid’s history book. And that’s all we’ll be. An insignificant, minute sentence that will never encompass everything we accomplished in our entire lives. An insignificant _NOTHING_.”

The room throbbed with the last screamed word, which had been the loudest out of the entirety of the thunderous rant, and the silence that followed it seemed to draw out for ages. Long, empty, terrifying.

I was staring back at her as she stared down at me, huffing hard, quaking, red in the face, green eyes tortured and enraged and broken, yet they were fuller of life than they’d been in weeks.

Finally, cold, I spoke. “Are you done?”

Buttercup, quiet, looked me full in the face for a long time, eyes ferocious and searching fiercely for something in my stare—anger, probably. And that moment confirmed what I already knew. She had been looking for a fight.

That was how Buttercup dealt with things. Fight the pain away, smother it with rage. She had antagonized me purposely, saying everything that she knew would hurt me, hurt all of us, so that I would scream back at her and she could scream at me again and her agony would go away for the moment. It was the only thing I could do for her now, I realized. And I wasn’t going to give that to her.

Of course what she’d said had hurt me. If I hadn’t had a solid grip on the knowledge that this was what she was doing, what she said might have destroyed me if I’d let it. But I wasn’t going to enable her self-destructive, unhealthy coping mechanisms. I refused.

And seeing my complete defeat, my complete emptiness at her entire provocation, seemed to finally do her in.

Buttercup’s legs collapsed, coming down from her adrenaline fueled recklessness. She sat back on her heels, the blood draining from her face with all of the ticking rage. She looked away from me. Replacing her rage was a cold, hollow anguish all over that she didn’t even bother hiding.

Kneeling down to meet her, gentle, Butch caught and encircled her in his arms, hiding his face against her hair. “There we are,” he whispered to her. “That’s enough now.” As always, he was the one to bring her back down to Earth again. She slumped forward, catching her face in both of her open trembling hands.

Everyone sat down once again, the circle of honesty from before essentially spoiled now. Quiet stretched on for another few minutes, everyone recovering from that brutal exchange between us, once again avoiding gazes and not saying anything. Brick only tightened his hold on me.

Then one very quiet voice came from beside me. “You’re wrong, you know.” Bubbles. I turned to look at her. She seemed to be speaking to Buttercup alone and was observing her, her face ignited with a resolve that I hadn’t seen on her in weeks. She asked Buttercup, “Why wouldn’t we be remembered? How could we not be?” She shook her head slightly. “Do you think there’s ever been anyone else like us in history?”

“Bubbles—” I started, and what I was meaning to say next, I didn’t know. But Bubbles interrupted me anyway.

“I’m serious,” she interjected, looking at me now. Her eyes were wide and sincere. “Really, Blossom. Besides the boys, has there ever been anyone else exactly like us?” She didn’t wait for my answer. She shook her head resolutely. “No. People tried, though. They’ve tried to create more of us. More _like_ us. And they failed every time. No matter what, they couldn’t get it right. They could never get our powers right, or our personalities. You know why?”

She’d leveled the last question to everybody. We all stared at her, not knowing how to answer.

Knowing we wouldn’t be able to answer, she answered for us. “Because we’re fate.” Shakily, unsteadily, she began to stand. Boomer came quickly to her side and offered her his hand. She took it, standing up all of the way.

She continued, “We were fated to be here. Blossom—you, me and Buttercup were created by accident. Yet, through that accident, we turned out to be perfectly balanced, perfectly opposite little girls. Girls that would learn and grow and get older, and would be fated to save the world hundreds of times. You call that an accident?” Bubbles turned her eyes to mine. She had begun to tear up, but her face wasn’t sad. Her features looked more hopeful than I had seen them in months. Hope radiated from her in palpable waves, stretching up and out and filling every corner of the room, permeating every dark crevice. “There are no accidents. There are no coincidences. We were fated to protect people. And we have done that so many times that I couldn’t even count them.”

The room had fallen silent once again—but this time, it was in reverence. Every pair of eyes stared at her. Even Buttercup had come out of her slumped posture, lifting her face from her hands to stare at our sister in rapt wonder.

Bubbles went on, “Maybe we’ve all done our part. We’ve already accomplished what we were here to do. But some people on this planet—some humans—can’t even say that. There are so many people that leave this Earth without ever having fulfilled their potential, their true value to this world, and their dreams. But us, all of us—we can say that we have already. Do you realize how rare that is? How _remarkable_ that is?” She met each of our gazes again. One tear escaped her right eye, rolled down her cheek, but it disappeared into her radiant smile. The smile that, with everything in me, I couldn’t understand could be so genuine and captivating in a time such as this. But as always—if anyone could, Bubbles could. “No one could ever forget us. No one ever will. Just by existing, we’ve changed so many people’s lives, touched so many of their hearts. And even after we’re gone, that will never go away. Ever.”

Carefully, Bubbles sat again, right in front of me. She reached out to wipe a tear from my face, a tear that I hadn’t even realized was there. Then, she took both of my hands in hers and looked into my eyes. “Don’t you ever forget how important that is.” She turned, facing the rest of our group. “All of you. Never forget.” She turned her eyes to Buttercup in particular, looking at her with such compassion that it physically tugged at my heartstrings. “We could let this bring all of us closer together, or it could tear us all apart. We have the power to decide how this affects us.”

Frail, with a gaze that was shattered, Buttercup responded with a raw whisper, “I have no power left.”

Bubbles said, “Only because you’re letting it win.” Very slightly, she shook her head once, with a finality that said she would not be argued with. “Don’t let it.”

Shortly after Bubbles’ beautiful words of wisdom and faith for all of us, all of us left the living room, retiring to our respective rooms and beds.

We had decided to end our scary, uncertain, painfully honest group discussion on a somewhat hopeful—if maybe in some ways, childlike—note. It was for the best, we decided. Especially if any of us had wanted to get any rest at all that night. Or ever again.

Some childlike innocence couldn’t hurt us at this point—maybe it was the only way we could escape from the suffering for even just a little while.

And just as well, Bubbles’ words echoed in my mind as I lay in bed later that night.

They had given me one last push—one last thin thread that would keep me hanging on. Not that we’d have any way of knowing if they would, but I hoped, hoped beyond hope, that her lovely words would prove true.

That the city of Townsville would never forget us, just as she said. That this generation would raise children, and they would tell their children, and then their grandchildren, stories of the superheroes that had once flown the skies of Townsville, arresting thieves and destroying monsters and keeping the world safe. The heroes that they could always depend on, the heroes that rarely let them down or let anything hurt them.

The heroes they loved.

* * *

 

**-Unknown POV-**

Words.

Can’t…don’t…gone.

Brain. Shrink.

Hands…paws…claws…hands…remember.

_Them_. Fault. All. Pay. Deserve. _They…why…me…instead…_

Destroy.

Remember. Remember. Remember. Cannot…forget…me.

Must. Not. Forget…who…me…am.

Not forget. Not forget words. Not forget walk. Not forget run. Not forget…invent.

Not forget. Not…not…

Words. Gone.

_Me._

Gone.


	19. Icarus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains many, many, MULTIPLE implications and depictions of illness and death. To those sensitive to these things, please read with caution. This chapter also contains mild sexual content. Haha...you're welcome.

**Chapter Eighteen**

_"_ _It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live." – Victor Hugo_

**-Unknown POV-**

> **FROM THE DESK OF MOJO JOJO**
> 
> To whom it may concern:
> 
> I had just wanted to destroy them.
> 
> I wanted to destroy the Powerpuff Girls and my mistakes, the Rowdyruff Boys. I had just wanted to get rid of them and restore my honor and status. I wanted my career back. I wanted my dignity back. I wanted to bestow on them the fate that they deserve. I wanted them out of my life forever. And though it is not by my hand, that is what is happening now, finally.
> 
> So why is this happening to me as well?
> 
> I never foresaw this. This wasn't part of the plan we'd devised. Our army of creatures weren't supposed to be flawed. They weren't supposed to die on their own. Professor Utonium wasn't supposed to analyze them.
> 
> But I suppose if he hadn't, I wouldn't have had any idea of what was happening to me right now.
> 
> I would likely just think that I was sick, had come down with some human virus, although I rarely had before. It's not like I ever thought that the Chemical X inside of me would someday fade away.
> 
> It started with those headaches. Those terrible, awful migraines. Then it escalated to fainting, and the nose bleeds where nothing came out but Chemical X. Then the projectile Chemical X vomiting.
> 
> I can feel it happening. Slowly, but it's happening. The size of my brain grows smaller each day, my once-snug-fitting helmet is beginning to hang loosely on my head. I'm starting to forget knowledge that was once bread and butter to me. Every once in a while, maybe once or twice a week, I forget how to walk on two legs. I go back to my quadrupedal gait without even realizing it, reaching forward on the knuckles of my hands with all of my weight and then swinging my back feet forward to meet them. Once I become aware that I'm doing it, I snap myself out of it. I've been trying to force myself to keep from doing it, and most days I'm successful. But I keep slipping.
> 
> Now I'm beginning to forget how to use forks and knives when I eat. I've been picking all of my food up with my hands, and I'll be halfway through my meal before I realize what I'm doing. Then I pick up the utensils, and I can't remember how to hold them properly. It's like I've never used them before.
> 
> My language is slipping, as well. I've been reading books every single day to remind myself of the language I've spoken for so long. But I can feel it slowly leaking out of my head like water. Turns of phrase, metaphors, similes, adjective phrases, prepositions, proper nouns, simple nouns, different verb forms—all slipping away from me bit by bit. I've even found writing this letter to be difficult.
> 
> The feeling is terrifying and unwelcome. And yet I can't seem to stop it.
> 
> I don't know how much time I have left.
> 
> If anybody reads this, if anyone else finds this—one day I will not be able to talk anymore. I won't be able to work my technology or gadgets or invent something to help myself. I won't be able to help myself at all. As much as I hate to confront this possibility, I know it's coming. I can feel it. And when it happens, I will need your help. Whoever you are.
> 
> Find Professor Utonium. Tell him to change me back. He is one of the people that I hate most in this entire world, but in a sense, he _created_ me—he turned me into the being that I am today. And he would be the only one that could help me.
> 
> If I cannot get to him myself first, take me to him. I will likely forget all my intelligent thoughts and memories once the de-transformation is complete, so you must heed this possible last letter. Whoever you may be, you might be my only hope. And I can only hope this shout into the void wasn't for naught.
> 
> If, by any small chance, I cannot be changed back into what I am now after all, and I am lost forever, then I offer only this: Take my place. Take my weapons, my doomsday charts and journals, my files, and my lair. Take the memory of me and make me greater than I could have ever hoped to be.
> 
> Make sure the world never forgets my name for all the rest of history.
> 
> _Signed,_
> 
> _Mojo Jojo_

For at least the tenth time, I stared at that last sentence written in the letter, feeling the most overwhelming mixture of emotions I had ever felt in my ancient life.

Eventually, I folded the letter up between my claws again, slowly lining up the edges perfectly. Carefully, I put it in the inside pocket of my luxury silk pink robe. And with barely contained rage, I turned to face the chimp on the floor of the room.

It paced around, its knuckles grazing the floor, its back feet matching the movement.

I stared down at it, my lip curled. It stared back at me with blank black eyes, looking mildly interested, but its glance held no recognition and not one ounce of the intelligent—sometimes maniacal—musings that they used to. No irritation, no raving lunacy. No thirst for power. Just simple, dumb curiosity. Just an animal.

Mojo didn't exist anymore.

Only Jojo was left.

* * *

**-Blossom's POV-**

The memory of our tense group discussion passed, and the days continued to tick by. They became longer, dragging, blending together in Professor's hospital ward until they became one long indeterminable stretch of time.

Professor had asked my sisters and I to spend our nights and most of our days permanently in the basement hospital ward. Our health had continued to decline, and we began having more insistent symptoms than Professor was comfortable with. He wanted to keep his attention on us as often as possible.

"It won't be so bad," Professor had tried to reassure us the day we had moved our pillows, blankets, and personal belongings that we could carry down into the basement. The focus on us in the media had calmed, he'd said to us, so our ban on the Internet and TV had thankfully been lifted. It was a slight relief—especially considering we would have nothing else to do in the basement all day.

As I grabbed my favorite books, my favorite movies, and my favorite furry pink pillow, I tried hard not to think of how the night before might've been the last time I would sleep in my own bedroom.

Our days and nights in the hospital began.

During these days, I began to lose consciousness easily. I lost it without even realizing it, until I found myself startling awake again.

My head ached constantly, and at every single moment of my waking hours, nausea curled at the back of my throat, even when I would lie as still as I could. And during my unconscious hours, I dreamed.

I dreamed of days when my sisters and I were at Polky Oaks Kindergarten, when we spent our days coloring, having snacks, taking naps, and having recess. Days when everything was fresh and young and wondrous to me, and every morning when I woke up I was filled with possibilities.

I dreamed of the days when we'd get a call on the Hotline, and we'd leave and fight crime. Those days were so simple. Beat up some robbers, come back to kindergarten. Take down Mojo, return for dinner with Professor.

I dreamed of our days back in middle school and high school. I thought of the challenges puberty had thrown at me, when things suddenly seemed so complicated, when some things seemed like the end of the world, but were actually still much easier than they seemed. I dreamt of the days in high school when I would fret about who I was, what I wanted, what I liked, _who_ I liked. Times when I would turn to my own self-personified conscience in earnest, as if it were a real person living in my head, and actually talk to it, look to it for advice. Days where I still had the freedom to be naïve.

Our problems weren't so dire. Looking back on them, they were simple.

I would always treasure those days. I would treasure them for as long as I still could. Until my final days ran dry. However long that would be now.

Back then, we never had to worry about not being able to live freely. We didn't once think of what we really were, what that would ultimately mean for us one day, and how we were going to die.

We thought we were immortal. Everything felt possible. Now nothing was possible anymore.

 

#

 

Days continued to pass.

One day, the day that I knew for sure that things would never be the same, I stopped having any dreams at all. Sleep had become just a black, formless void that I disappeared to for hours at a time.

I couldn't even take refuge in my own mind anymore.

Even my mind had become a black hole, joining with the larger worm hole that my entire life had become. Soon it would finish consuming all the existence that I had left, ripping it apart molecule by molecule until I never saw the light again.

 

#

 

"How are you feeling?"

The question had begun to make me feel sick just hearing it. I hated how those words made me feel when they were strung together. Pathetic, powerless. But when they were said in his voice, paired with the open sincerity on his face and worry in his ruby eyes, it stung just a bit less than usual.

"Oh, you know," I tried to say lightly, "just the usual." I forced my lips into something that hopefully resembled a smile.

Brick lowered himself onto his hospital bed, which was right next to mine. "It's okay. No one else is in here. You don't have to do that." As he paused, I took a quick look around the ward. All the other beds were, indeed, empty. I guess I had been so out of it that I hadn't noticed the others leave to other parts of the house, which was a true rarity these days. Brick continued, "I had a feeling you didn't feel much better, but I just thought I'd ask."

I looked at him, half shrugging, letting the stiff smile fade off my face with some relief. "Actually, my headache is pretty mild today. So I'm not too bad, really."

He gazed at me for a few moments, probably trying to determine if I was lying to make him feel better or not. Then, maybe deciding that I was telling him the truth, a small, tight grin appeared on his face. "That's good to hear, then."

From there, we began to talk, the way we only could when we weren't around the others. Frank but gentle. Two leaders taking the heavy loads off our shoulders and relying on each other.

"Do you sometimes think about…what they would do without you?" I asked him suddenly at some point. "Your brothers, I mean. If you were to…leave first."

"Of course I do," Brick replied, frowning the slightest bit in thought. "I know I seem hard on them sometimes, but…I worry about them." He shook his head. "I know we're all the same age, but sometimes I _feel_ older. You know? And like an older brother I just…want them to look to me during hard times. I want to protect them. And I don't want them to feel like they have no one to rely on. Especially now."

His words rang so relatable to me that it was almost frightening. "I know exactly how you feel." My gaze dropped down to my lap. "I would do anything to protect Buttercup and Bubbles. If there were some way, I would want to…go last. So I could still take care of the both of them." I paused, then I looked back up at him, meeting his eyes. "And you." I would do anything to protect him. Anything. And knowing that I was too feeble and powerless to protect him now filled me with guilt.

Brick gazed back at me for a beat or two, taking in what I said. Then he smirked. "Nope, sorry. That position's reserved for me. But nice try."

Unable to help it, I gave him a wry look. Half-jokingly, I said, "Can't we flip a coin for it? I call heads." If there was one thing this horrible, never ending nightmare had given me, if anything at all, it was a newfound dark sense of humor. I supposed the motivation behind it was 'laugh to hide the fear.'

He shook his head slowly, holding my eyes with his as his smirk faded the slightest bit. "Non-negotiable."

All right. Joke didn't work. I tried a new approach. "Then I demand it be me."

"Demand denied," Brick said straightforwardly, shaking his head again. I blinked at him, and he only raised his eyebrows at me.

I allowed myself a cynical chuckle. "It's a little morbid of us to be arguing about this, isn't it?" I pointed out.

Brick coincided, a shrewd light in his eyes, "Yes, well, our _lives_ are a little morbid now, aren't they?"

"Fair point," I admitted. Indeed, the six of us had become a real-life, ex-superpowered version of the Addams Family. I waited a moment, then I eyed him. "Still no room for reconsiderations?"

His arms folded. "Vetoed."

Something inside me flared under his even gaze and calm certainty, even with the gravity beneath what he was insisting on. I released a long sigh and mirrored him as I folded my arms, matching his smirk with my own. "Stubborn as always."

"And I intend to remain that way," he said with a proud inclination of his head.

For once, I yielded my defeat. Deciding to change the subject, knowing I wouldn't win this one, at least not right now, I said abruptly, "Remember last Thanksgiving?"

"Of course," Brick replied, with a real grin this time. "It was the best."

"It was, wasn't it?" I said. The memories flooded back to me. Then, inevitably, came the memory of that day that I had been trying most to avoid. My mood dropped in an instant. "Remember our game of Life Race?" I asked him, avoiding his gaze.

He sensed my change of mood immediately. "Yes," he answered, wary. "Why?"

I came out with it directly. "You know, at that point, I already knew about the…the sterile thing. Professor had told me just a couple of weeks before. And when I got the fake pregnancy during the game…" I trailed off, not knowing exactly how to finish that sentence. What was I going to say? That it messed with my head? Because it had. But I had the feeling that Brick had caught onto that already.

"Jesus," Brick muttered, confirming my thoughts. "I'm sorry, Bloss. That must have felt awful. And we were all laughing and joking, and…" he trailed off, too. He sighed. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I don't really know why I didn't," I told him. "I guess I didn't know if it would matter to you that much. We never even talked about that sort of thing yet. Not in detail, anyway."

"Of course it would've mattered to me, Bloss." Brick's voice softened. "Didn't you know that I think about our future together? What our life would've been like. A house. A dog. Some kids with eyes just like yours, and hopefully your charm. And both of our wit."

I thought I was prepared for it, but his words of our future in the past tense stung me so fiercely that it sucked the air out of me. It felt like someone had reached into my torso and wrung my heart between their hands. It hit me all at once, overwhelming and crushing, and my hands came up, covering my face. My voice came out muffled when I whispered, "oh God."

Seeing my anguish, Brick immediately stopped. Then I heard him stand up, come over to my bed, and carefully sit on the end of it. As I tried hard to calm myself, the both of us stayed quiet for a minute or so.

Brick eventually broke the silence, saying softly as his hand ran soothingly over my socked foot, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

"No," I said immediately, my voice breaking. "No, don't apologize. I just…hearing that just…" I couldn't finish my sentence without feeling like I was about to cry. Hearing the reality of our future together being taken away was too much for me. Shoving it away was the only way I'd been able to continue on like this, seeing him struggle daily, and him seeing me struggle.

I hadn't wanted to think about our non-future because I couldn't. Because it was impossible. Because thinking about it would make me disintegrate from the inside out. It was too much for me to bear.

Wordlessly, Brick scooted closer to me on my flat, uncomfortable bed that I had begun to hate. I made enough room for him to lie down next to me, and just as I was about to settle back onto the bed again, he gently wound his arms around me, bringing me against his chest. On my side, I lay there against him, curling my fingers against his t-shirt and settling with my ear against his chest. His slow, human-like heart beat coursed through my head. The sound of it calmed me almost immediately, and my eyes slid shut as his hand smoothed my hair back away from my face.

Every aspect of my life had changed in a second. My entire world was different. But there was still him.

"Hey, Bloss?" His voice came suddenly, reverberating through his chest pleasantly.

"Hmm?" I answered, halfway to sleep.

"I need to tell you something. Something really important." His voice sounded serious.

I shifted slightly, forcing my brain to switch back to alertness and snap out of its' drowsy trance. "Go ahead," I told him. "I'm listening."

Brick drew in a long breath. I heard the whoosh of it in his expanding chest. Then he sighed, and I moved with his ribs as they contracted. "Lately, I've been thinking…wondering, really."

"Wondering about what?" I prodded.

He paused, then started, "My life now, compared to a few years ago, is so different. And sometimes I wonder…what this whole thing would've been like without you. If me and my brothers were on our own through this whole Chemical-X-burning-out thing, and not with you guys. Especially Professor."

My pulse stuttered in shock at his words. Indeed, what would this have been for them without Professor's treatments and care? What would this have been like for _us_ without _them_? What a world of difference it would have made. How much more horrible it would have been. I swallowed hard. "Whoa," I managed to say finally. I asked, "What made you think of that?"

Brick shrugged slightly, but only with one shoulder so he wouldn't jostle me. "I've just been thinking about a lot of stuff lately. But, to be honest…" he trailed off, hesitating.

I frowned up at him. "Go on, you can tell me. You can tell me anything."

He hesitated for another moment, then finally he came out with it. "Even before this started happening, when we'd just gotten together, I thought about things like this, too. There are times when I lose whole nights of sleep when I let myself think of my past. The things I've done." His arms around me tightened. "It feels like whole lifetimes away that those things happened, but, that's the thing—it wasn't that long ago. It was only a few years ago. And I can't sit here and pretend like I never did those terrible things just because they happened in the past. I can't pretend like I'm a whole new person. I'm not, Blossom. I'm still me."

Very quietly, I said, "I know."

Brick went on. "By accident, I still think of things that…frankly, they terrify me. Every single day, it takes effort for me to fight against every horrible instinct that was put into me by my creator. For me, it takes effort to choose to be good. It's a daily struggle for me. I don't think I can accurately explain to you in words what it feels like to battle against myself every single day."

At his words, my heart panged, and I nestled my face into his t-shirt, unable to say anything. I'd had a general idea of how hard this change had been for him, but hearing him say it put everything into perspective for me—there was no way I could really know how hard it was. And I felt guilty that I couldn't understand.

He continued, running a hand over the top of my head idly. "Deep down, I'm not good. I try to be, but at my very core, I'm not. And in a different world where things make sense, someone like me could have never been with someone like you."

I jerked back, tilting my head up to scowl at him head on. "Brick." My tone was full of disapproval. He knew I hated it when he said things like that.

"I mean it," he said, dead serious, with no remorse at all.

"Brick, don't you dare," I told him, not letting up with my glare. "Stop it. You know that upsets me."

Patient as always, he only nodded. "I know it does. But just hear me out, okay?" He waited until I settled back down against his chest again, smoothing my hair back once more with his hand, and then he continued. "You're so much better than me, Blossom. And the thing is, you were _born_ that way. I had to undo everything I had been raised with, undo everything I was, and learn how to become a good person. But you just _are_. You made me a better person just by being who you are. So…thank you."

Startled by the new direction this had taken, my upset turning immediately into fuzzy warmth, my head throbbed just a little bit more than usual as my cheeks inexplicably flushed. "It's not just because of me," I insisted, trying to hide my red cheeks as I ducked my head away from his view. "You're the one that ultimately chose this new way of life. I'm not responsible for that."

At my plain embarrassment, Brick chuckled. My head and shoulders bounced along with the movement of his chest. "Of course you are," he said. He reached with a gentle hand for my chin, lifting my face so he could look at me. His affectionate stare drowned me. "Do you think I would've given a shit about being good to begin with if it hadn't been for you?" His thumb ran against my hot cheek. "Besides my brothers, you're all I have in this life." He paused, sitting up slowly. I followed, also sitting up. His face came closer to mine, and his voice softened. "I was _made_ for you. If you were never made, I never would have been made, either. I exist because you exist. You've always been my life, Bloss. And you always will be. Wherever we go after this."

Brick closed the distance between us, brushing the softest whisper of a kiss onto the bridge of my nose. My heart leapt into my throat. Then he pressed a kiss to my left cheek, then one on my right cheek, then lingered with his lips just a breath away from mine. Greedily, I closed the space between us, kissing him wholly and languorously in a way I had not done in what felt like centuries. No matter how many times we kissed, no matter how long, it would always give me the sweetest, purest ache I could never possibly get tired of. I tugged him closer to me, enclosing his wide shoulders in my arms and pulling him against me.

After a minute or so, Brick pulled away, the both of us breathing heavily. He leaned his forehead against mine, hands cupping my face between them. Chaos spun inside of me. I wanted him holding me always. Endlessly. Forever. Brick whispered to me, "No matter what happens to us after this…" He trailed off, then started again, "If another me was reborn into someone else, and you became someone else too, I would still belong to you. I would wait a thousand more lives for another you. I would always find you and come back to you."

My heart was swelling up and cracking apart at the same time. His words healed me and ruined me. And all I wanted at that moment was Brick.

Suddenly, I broke away from his grasp. Before I scrambled off of the bed, I glanced at him quickly enough to see the flash of hurt pass over his face. "Just a second," I murmured to him as I crossed the room to the door of the hospital ward, rushing as quickly as I could manage. I peeked through the window on the door, peering into the hallway. It was empty. As quietly as I could, I lifted my hand to the lock on the doorknob. I turned it, hearing the click of the lock sliding into place.

Slowly, I turned in place, looking over my shoulder. Brick had watched me lock the door. I watched as a number of expressions crossed his face. After one last glance back at the small window, and finding it still dark and empty, I began to walk back toward my bed. Brick watched me approach, unreadable.

As soon as I reached my bed quarters, I grasped my curtain with one hand, dragging it across the tiny space both my bed and his bed occupied, effectively sealing us inside the floor-to-ceiling curtained space. As I did, I continued to take glances back at Brick. It had finally seemed to dawn on him what was happening.

Now that I knew for sure that we had our privacy, in full view of him, holding his gaze calmly, I tugged down the zipper of my dusty rose hoodie, pushing it off my shoulders and letting it drop to the ground.

Brick watched it drop, and then he locked eyes with me again. His had grown wide. "Blossom…" he said.

I raised my eyebrows at him, taking hold of the bottom of my blush colored camisole. "Yes?" I responded innocently, then proceeded to tug my cami up and over my head, my hair spilling down over my shoulders, back and over the cups of my bra. Though it objectively didn't matter much in that moment, I was glad I had worn one of my prettier ones that day—hot pink with black lace.

"Hey…come on. Cut that out," he said, voice faltering. Brick's wide eyes shot down to my chest for a few seconds, as if unable to help himself, then back up to my face again.

I kept my eyebrows raised, as if I had no idea what he was talking about. "Cut what out?" I asked. I tugged on the waistband of my plaid pajama bottoms, pushed them down, and they fell to the ground.

Brick was turning red—from his ears, to his neck, and all the way down past his collarbones. " _Blossom_ ," he said again. Even his voice was feverish.

I finally allowed myself a small smile. "Brick?" I took a step closer to my bed.

"Blossom, stop it. We…we can't…" he stopped, gulping. My smile grew. I took another step towards my bed. He scooted away on it, flustered, starting again, "Don't get me wrong, I definitely want to. But we don't know how it could affect you. You're sick."

"So are you," I said to him, twirling a tendril of hair around my finger as I took yet another step closer to the bed. "Or did you forget?" I sat on the foot of the bed, then climbed up onto it.

Biting down hard on his lip, his eyes shot down to my body, as if, once again, he couldn't resist looking. His expression was almost tortured. "I don't want you to feel badly," he managed weakly.

The truth was, I felt decent at that moment. My head only had the dullest throb, my nausea wasn't present. And that was partly why this couldn't wait a second longer. I started a slow crawl on my hands and knees over to him. "Then come make me feel good." I stopped in front of him and grasped the bottom edge of his burgundy t-shirt with both hands, pulling it over his head as he lifted his arms, letting me undress him. I threw the piece of clothing over onto his bed.

Brick's resolve was visibly crumbling, but he had one more protest in him. "We shouldn't…" he trailed off, not finishing. One of his hands reached underneath my arm. Fingers splayed, in an almost savoring manner, his hand smoothed over my shoulder, down my shoulder blade, over the back of my bra, all the way down my bare lower back, stopping at the swell of my hip. He swallowed hard, his eyes hooded with lust.

I leaned into him until my face was an inch away from his. I whispered, "I know you've wanted this for a long time. I have too." I locked eyes with him. "I thought it was better to wait. And it was, at the time. But…I waited too long. And now we have no more time." My eyes began to sting, and I paused. Just like that, Brick's arms wrapped around me. I said, "I wish I hadn't waited. I wish I could've had endless moments like this with you. Don't you?" My voice broke on my question. I felt a tear escape from the corner of my eye.

"Of course I wish that," Brick assured me, tone raspy and hushed. "Of course I do."

I shifted so that I was straddling his lap, and Brick pulled me closer. I brought my hands to his hair, weaving my fingers through the silken red much like mine, though his was a deep pumpkin tone compared to my coppery strands. It had gotten longer, though. Its' length brushed his collarbones now. I leaned down until my lips could press into his collarbones, then they pressed up his Adam's apple and the side of his neck. Brick took an unsteady intake of breath, pulse racing, and all the muscles in his neck moved against my lips as he swallowed, his fingers' grip tightening on my waist. He groaned low in his throat, and the bass rumbled against my mouth.

Slowly I brought my face back up and my lips brushed his, tears rolling down my cheeks and dripping away. "So I want you now," I whispered, "before I can't have you anymore."

Brick pulled me flush against him, his grasp tight and voracious, and I pulled his lips to mine. And then my mind was ablaze and time was gone and there was only Brick.

Brick's hands desperately clutching at me. Brick's heavy breath against my ear as he uttered my name. The magnificent heat that diffused from his skin. Curing me and reviving me, obliterating me and devastating me. Sweat that mixed with tears.

Harmonious pain that I wanted for eternity.

 

#

 

Time went on, continuing to blend and crawl by. I continued to try to cherish this time, to cherish every moment I spent with those I loved.

Around the same time, my sisters and I noticed that our hair was thinning.

It wasn't so bad at first—our hair just started shedding a little more, strand by strand, than normal. We thought maybe it wasn't anything to get worried about.

Within days, it was coming out of our scalps in clumps. Professor told us that there wasn't anything that he could do to restore it for us, or to slow the loss—and so we just had to deal with it and try not to get stressed, as that seemed to make it worse.

Buttercup, however, had other plans.

One day she stood next to my bed, holding the electric razor out in front of her. "It has to be one of you," she explained to me. "I can't reach the back and top of my head. Someone else has to do it, and Butch refused."

I stared at the razor, which she was still holding out to me. My stomach turned in discomfort. "Buttercup, are you _sure_ you want—"

"Yes," she interrupted curtly. Then after a moment or two, she said softer, "I don't want to watch more clumps of hair swirl down the shower drain anymore. I don't want to deal with taking all of it out of the brush and seeing myself in the mirror looking like a stray cat. I just want to get it all over with at once. Like ripping a band-aid off." She held the razor out further, a more vulnerable light in her eyes now. "Please, Pinky. I need you. Just do me a solid and…do this for me."

It was her way of winning at least one small battle, I thought. Buttercup always did fight against the un-fightable. If the entire world ever came up against her, 7.5 billion against one, she would come at them fists swinging until her feet couldn't carry her and her lungs breathed their last.

Her words, along with how she looked, had swayed me. I took the razor from her hand, holding it in both of mine. "Okay," I said. As I got up from my bed, I took a quick glance back at Brick, who only looked at me grimly.

Before we left the hospital ward, the sweet voice of our sister piped up. "Wait!" We paused and turned to see Bubbles scrambling off of her bed. "I'm coming, too," she said. Her short hair was in two tiny pigtails on either side of her ears, and as she walked towards us, I noticed they were thinner than her ponytails used to be. She came straight over to Buttercup, and without another word, grabbed her hand. She held it as all three of us left the ward and walked down the hallway to the basement's bathroom.

When we arrived and shut the door, Buttercup sat on the closed toilet seat, and immediately shut her eyes. "Just do it now, before I change my mind," she said to me. Bubbles took her hand again, and Buttercup clutched her hand in a vice grip in return. I switched the razor on, and the noise of it resounded in the small room, highlighting our stark silence.

Biting my lip, I gently started with the nape of Buttercup's neck. The raven strands floated to the ground as I worked. Buttercup was stiff, staying utterly still. I wondered if she was holding her breath. Bubbles whispered words of comfort to her.

Soon I had made it to the backs of her ears, and then to the crown of her head. By then, Buttercup had stoically begun to cry. She roughly swiped at her eyes and nose with the back of her free hand, as if irritated and humiliated at her own tears. Her other hand still squeezed Bubbles' hand. My heart constricted at the sound of her upset, but knowing that it was too late to stop now, I continued working without a word, trying to keep my hands steady.

When I only had her overgrown bangs left, I said to her softly, "Almost done." I held them as I shaved so that they wouldn't fall onto her teary cheeks. And then all of it was gone. I brushed my hand across her scalp, getting rid of extra clippings. "Do you want to look?" I asked her by way of telling her that I was done. I added gently, "You don't have to."

Buttercup sniffed deeply. "No," she said. "I want to." Letting go of Bubbles' hand, she shakily stood. She walked over to stand front of the mirror, face stony. She stared at her bald reflection.

I walked over to her silently and stood behind her in the mirror. As soon as my reflection showed behind hers, her eyes went to mine. Every feeling she had in that moment swum in them—fear, anger, unbearable sadness. My arms opened to her. Automatically, she spun to face me, throwing her arms around my neck and burying her face into my sweatshirt as she sobbed. I hugged tightly her around the waist.

Bubbles came up behind Buttercup, and she wrapped her arms around both of our shoulders, pressing a kiss onto the top of Buttercup's scalp.

Buttercup whimpered into my sweatshirt, loud enough for both of us to hear, "I love you guys."

Bubbles and I didn't respond—we didn't have to. We only held her tighter. We all held each other for a long time, and as we did, I looked at the reflection of us in the mirror. The very image of love and protection. The very thing that we were created to be. Supporting and lifting each other up as we always did, and having our biggest strength and balance in threes.

Three pairs of arms that hugged, three pairs of crying eyes, three hearts that were still, for the moment, beating.

Three little girls.

 

#

 

The weirdest regrets occurred to me at times in that hospital bed.

Sometimes I wondered what the weather would be like in the summer time this year. Would it rain a lot? Would it be hotter than normal?

I thought about Pop's Ice Cream & Gelato downtown. I wondered how many customers they would get this summer, wondered how the petulant, gum-popping counter girl would be able to handle the demands of all those sweaty, demanding customers.

I wondered what those other flavors tasted like. All those other flavors that I'd never gotten to try. I thought I would have time.

Was it so strange that I regretted not trying every single flavor of that delicious gelato when I'd had the chance?

There were so many other things that I would be missing out on other than gelato. Then why couldn't I stop thinking of that moment I had my gloves pressed up against that display glass, eagerly looking at every single one?

It was, weirdly, the same feeling I had gotten the moment Professor had told me that my sisters and I were sterile.

It was the feeling of missing out, that lack of possibility. Zero possibility of ever having a child, zero possibility of ever getting married, zero possibility of ever graduating college. Zero possibility of ever having any more of that delicious gelato. The possibilities were being taken from me, from all of us, stolen forcibly. And perhaps that was the most deplorable outcome of all of this.

And the thought of it filled me with such unspeakable misery that the darkness of my own mind consumed me.

So when these thoughts came to me, I would turn to Brick. And we would quiz each other about everything. Science. Math. Historical facts. Conspiracy theories. Anything.

Like, "Which army infamously attacked itself and lost 10,000 of its' own men?"

"The Austrian army, in 1788."

Or, "About 20% of the atmosphere's oxygen is produced by…?"

"The Amazon rainforest."

And even, "If Elvis is alive, where do you think he's hiding?"

"Oh, Hawaii for sure. The man loved that place. If he's alive, he's probably on some private beach down there, chilling, playing an uke, and eating a peanut-butter, banana and bacon sandwich."

This was the only thing that would distract me, these conversations. They would last for hours, until something else came along to distract us.

Anything to help me forget.

 

#

 

There was some relative peace for a little while. Maybe the eye of the storm.

Then at some point, and I couldn't pinpoint exactly when—but water began to burn.

It started small, like irritated skin here and there. Then one night, as I began to get into the warm shower, I screamed and jumped out just as the water had touched me.

Brick had burst into the bathroom, repeatedly asking me what was wrong with panic in his voice as I screamed on the floor. Finally, when I calmed down long enough, I looked down at my hands and froze. Scorch marks stared back up at me from my skin, red and angry. "Burns," was all I said, emptily. Immediately, Brick moved my damp hair away from my bare back which, he said, was practically glowing red.

The same day, Buttercup choked and gagged as she had tried to drink from a glass of water. She dropped it, and when the glass shattered against the ground, water splashing water all over her feet, she yelped in pain.

After some analyzation, and treatment of our 2nd degree burns, the only word that had stuck to my shell shocked mind from Professor's explanation was 'rejection'.

We had begun rejecting water. Water, the most essential need for living things, had become poisonous to us.

Even after telling us that we could still try hydrating via a gentle, slow IV with physiologic saline solution—i.e. the way we had started doing everything else—as well as gentle, soap-only rinse offs with wash cloths for bathing, Professor couldn't explain why this was happening. We couldn't understand it, either. It was as if nothing in our lives was making sense anymore.

But at this point, I think all of us realized that this was the beginning of the end.

 

#

 

From that day, everything was a rapid, downward spiral—it all happened so quickly. But I supposed that it was just as that saying goes: death waits for no one.

 

#

 

The following Tuesday morning, very shortly after waking up, Bubbles didn't respond when Boomer was talking to her.

He had been speaking to her from his hospital bed, asked her a question, and she hadn't looked up from the Rubik's Cube between her hands. Just kept squinting at it in concentration, working on it with her fingers.

She didn't look up until he'd gotten up from his bed, walked over to her, and put his hand on her arm. He had startled her, and she jumped, looking up at him with wide shocked eyes. He asked her the question again. She only stared at him as he spoke, her brow furrowing in puzzlement and fear.

Then, very slowly, she raised a hand to her left ear. She gave it a light smack with her fingertips. Then, she pointed at it, looking at Boomer with tears in her eyes.

Professor speculated that her hearing had gone away sometime when she had slept the night before. As he analyzed her, Boomer stayed glued to her side, outright weeping in her lap. He was utterly beside himself. She only stroked his hair gently as he cried, looking down at him with the hollow look of someone who had nothing left to lose.

The rest of us didn't even know what to do or say. So for days we said nothing. With the sound of Bubbles' sweet voice gone—her sunny humming, her infectious, musical laugh, her soft words of encouragement for everyone—the already quiet household had become despondent.

With this single development, every miniscule ounce of life that was left had disappeared. And all that remained made the basement laboratory feel like the morgue of a hospital instead.

 

#

 

Not long after that, just days later, Buttercup woke one day and could no longer see.

She'd sat up in her bed, blinking, blinking repeatedly. Even after she had begun to cry, and then when her crying turned to weeping, she kept waving her hands in front of her face and blinking, blinking. As if the action would force her vision to come back.

Butch tried to console her, to hold her and smooth his hand over the top of her hairless head and calm her, even as her weeps rose and turned to hysterical shrieks. He tried not to cry, he did. He tried hard. But eventually the tears he tried to hold just spilled over. Even as he tried to hide them from all of us.

The scene was so overpowering, so devastating that I had to stumble out of the ward to the bathroom and retch. The action had become so mundane for me over the week that the muscles in my torso had become sore from the recurring action. Brick had come in after me, came to hold my thinned, stringy hair back from falling into the toilet as black poured from my throat.

When I was done, powerless, I began to cry into my hands as I whispered between racking sobs, "What do I do? I don't know what to do. I can't sit here and watch this happen to them. _Tell me what to do._ "

Brick held me tightly from behind, saying nothing. I didn't expect him to answer, because even if he could answer me, I didn't think anything he could say would comfort me.

As I cried, the tears were hotter than what I thought was normal. When I wiped them away with the back of my hand, I looked down at them.

My tears were no longer clear and watery. They were solid black.

 

#

 

More days passed.

The boys began to reject water, just as we had. Professor prepared their hydration IVs. Never leaving their hospital beds became a necessity for them, too.

Pain became all-encompassing. I spent my days lying still, nausea and aching and thirst constricting every breath I took. The short-term treatments that Professor made for us no longer seemed to have any effect on my sisters and I.

I continued to gradually lose my sanity at the hand of my own psyche, swirling down, down, down.

 

#

 

Just as I thought that maybe I couldn't handle this, that maybe I really couldn't go on one more second, it came.

It came for me quiet and tranquil one day, on a cold day as average as any of the other days I had lived lately.

As I lay awake in my hospital bed, wracked with potent agony, listening to the sounds of the morning around me, trying to suppress another wave of nausea from making the black bitterness rise from my stomach, there it was—the exhaustion.

This exhaustion was unlike any other exhaustion I had ever known. Instead of being heavy and oppressive, like a crashing and destructive wave of a tsunami, it came slowly to me like the gentle rise of a tide. Coming over my feet, rising softly up my ankles, calves, and knees. Over my hips it came, then my waist, then my chest filled with an intoxicating, saccharine, warm flood, as comforting as a lullaby. So comforting that I didn't want to fight it—that I wanted to enfold myself in it until the pain stopped and all my sorrows were forgotten.

The tips of my fingers warmed, then numbed, then my arms, then my shoulders. Individually, from the neck down, my muscles slackened as they all fell asleep.

There was only enough muscle strength in my neck for me to turn my head slightly to my left, where Brick's hospital bed was five feet away from mine. There he slept, his face peaceful and free of the emptiness and anguish I had gotten used to seeing on his features. His chin was dropped against his shoulder, and his face was turned towards me in a way that made me sure that he had been watching me until he had drifted asleep.

Seeing him this way, so blissful and beautiful in his slumber, so serene, made it easy to keep from fighting anymore. Part of me wanted to call out to him, to wake him, to tell him what I knew was happening and to ask for one last kiss, to look into his eyes one last time.

But to rob him of his peace, to force him to watch me leave would be, I knew, the cruelest and most selfish thing I could ever do. Because I knew the image of me leaving him would never be gone from his mind for as long as he had to live without me.

And if I could never again kiss him or hold him, if I could never again tell him how much I loved him, if I could never again make him happy in all the ways I wished that I could, then this—leaving quietly—would be my last act of protection. Of true love.

As I drunk in his features one last time, my heart swelled and warmed, swallowing every last bit of him that it could. Warmth crawled up my neck.

"I love you," I whispered. The words were so quiet that he didn't even stir.

My eyelids began to droop. My awareness began to blur around the edges. I watched the way his chest lifted, then fell, with each breath he took and then released. My heavy gaze lifted to the way his eyelashes rested at the top of his cheeks. Traced every last line of his face.

Then, having saved it for the very end, my eyes lifted to the white, shiny scar that slashed across his eyebrow.

The scar that, despite all that we had been and what we were no longer, had never quite healed perfectly. The mark that symbolized our bringing together, the mark that sealed the fate that he would always be mine and I would forever be his.

With this thought in my mind, finally, I let my drooping eyelids slide shut. The radiating pain in my head slowly, mercifully, left. All the sounds of the laboratory hospital went away gradually—the last noise I heard fade away was the constant beeping of my heart monitor.

My awareness shut off with that sweet warmth, and my limbs began to float.

Affected by gravity no longer, I felt my thin, limp hair lift around me, spinning and brushing against my face. The weakness, nausea and pain left my body as I felt it gently lift.

My eyelids no longer heavy, I opened my eyes. I levitated aimlessly in an empty limbo. It felt like I was in a large body of water, but all there was around me was darkness and silence. And stars. Endless, infinite amounts of glowing stars. But instead of the stars being eons, lightyears away, they were small and close—they surrounded me.

Fighting against the thick, viscous feeling of water pressure around me, I unhurriedly lifted my arm, reaching, and I touched a pinprick of light. Stardust floated down from it, and when I took my hand away, the sparkling, iridescent dust coated my fingertips.

When I brought my arm back to my side, more stars swirled around me like dust motes in the sunlight, stirred by my movement. I blinked as one bumped into my cheek, then began to float away through the red curtains of my hair, leaving a trail of silver dust in its' wake. For a long time, I watched it. At peace.

I turned my gaze away from the star's journey. Bringing my knees up, slowly curling into a ball, I accepted where I was and remained there.

Just me and the exquisite ocean of stars.

* * *

**-Brick's POV-**

A coma, Professor had said.

I stared down at her on her hospital bed. Down to the drip in her arm, the IVs, and the respirator attached to her face, this moment was nearly identical to when I had brought her here after fainting two months ago, sitting next to her bed and waiting for her to wake up.

If it weren't for one big difference. The large, likely chance that she wouldn't wake up this time.

The health she'd once possessed on her features had all gone away. Her face, drawn, had become emaciated. Deep purple circles had become a permanent part of her face, along with the way her cheekbones jutted out and her jaw became sharp, the slight roundness to her face that I had loved gone. Her once shiny and glossy red hair was dull and thin. Just like her sisters' hair, it had been coming out in clumps.

Just like my brothers and I, strand by strand, had begun to notice more hair loss as well. I hadn't told her that, though. I hadn't wanted her to worry. Maybe I'd pull a Buttercup and shave my head, too. Butch had already.

Just as our bodies had begun to reject the world around us, they had gone down the final route of rejecting themselves. Falling apart at the seams. So, perhaps, it was better that all three of the girls had fallen into comas. I hated to think what could have happened to them instead, what they would have had to suffer instead. Maybe I would have had nightmares about it, if I still had dreams anymore.

It had been two days now.

I had been sitting up on my bed, talking to her. Not expecting a response, of course. But I would tell her things, tell her jokes, wait for her to smile. Play her videos on my phone even though I knew her eyes wouldn't flutter open to watch them. I would stand over her and watch her face closely, carefully. Looking for the slightest twitch. I'd hold her hand, squeeze it. Wait for her to squeeze mine back the way she always had.

Those things never came.

I knew it was foolish, even pointless. But I couldn't bring myself to stop holding onto the thin, weak thread of hope that I had left inside of me. The hope that she would wake up and she would be okay again. That time would somehow reverse and I would get one last chance to tell her how much I loved her.

That hope—that flimsy thread—was all that was holding me in place, keeping me grounded, keeping me from comprehending that she was likely gone. I would hold onto my delusion. Even if it meant I lost my sanity for good.

After all, it wasn't like I was the only one. I observed from a distance as my brothers did the same with Bubbles and Buttercup. Maybe it was why the three of us stopped talking to each other for the most part, why we hid from one another, knowing that the truth would hit us sooner if we had to admit aloud what each of us was doing. How irrational it was.

Before I went to sleep the second night, I stooped next to her bedside. I smoothed her limp hair back gently from her face. Pressed my lips to her forehead.

Leaning back from her, watching her still face, the quote appeared in my mind and came to my lips before I could stop it. "'There's little joy in life for me, and little terror in the grave,'" I recited, then continued, voice lowering to a whisper. "'I've lived the parting hour to see of one I would have died to save.'" Pausing, then frowning as I continued to stare down at her, thumb caressing her cheek, I said, "You once said Charlotte Brontë was one of your favorite poets. Remember that?"

As I had done all day that day after speaking to her, I waited. Searched her face for the slightest flinch. My thumb kept stroking her cheek. My frown deepened. My eyes began to sting. "Come on, Bloss. Wake up. Tell me you remember."

I waited again. Her face remained smooth. Her only movement remained the shallow lifting and settling of her ribs, reminding me that she was, for the moment, still there. In some way. Just lost. I hoped that she wasn't scared. My face began to contort with emotion I couldn't seem to control. I leaned forward, kissing her forehead again, firmer this time. As if I could kiss movement back into her body.

My lips still pressed against her forehead, I recited another line from a poem that I knew she loved. "'You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.'" Finally, I pulled back, tears streaming hot and black from my eyes. I whispered, anguish flooding my voice, "I know you can hear me. Don't be afraid. I'm right here."

I was keeping my promise to myself, and to her—that I would be the last to go. And as long as she was still here, I would stay. I would protect her. Keep her safe in whatever way I could.

Even if that only meant sitting here and watching her, reciting her favorite poems and reading from her favorite books. Hoping that she could hear.

Somehow. Wherever she was.


	20. Redemption (The Scientist)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains references to suicide.

**Chapter Nineteen**

_“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” -Carl Sagan_

**-Professor’s POV-**

I stared down at their emaciated, motionless, comatose forms.

All six of them.

After an agonizing week—the longest week of my life, where I could do nothing but watch as the boys slowly fell apart at the girls’ bedsides, crying and screaming at them to wake up and losing every last bit of the lucidity they had left—they approached me.

They couldn’t take it anymore, they’d said. Their symptoms had all taken a turn for the worse, just as it had happened to the girls before them. My treatments—the Chemical X drip, the nutritional drip, the hydration drip, even morphine drips—began to no longer work for them, and their physical pain along with their mental trauma compounded and ultimately became too much for them to manage.

So they begged me, _pleaded_ me, to put them to sleep.

I didn’t want to. I very nearly said no. But I looked at the hollow, deadened torment in their eyes, their faces which were empty shells, and I knew these homeless, powerless boys had nothing left. Even Brick, who had seemed the most determined to stick around after Blossom faded, his resolve and strength had worn down to dust in the end. I had never once seen these boys—the once all-powerful Rowdyruff Boys—seem so brittle and drained of everything that had once made them themselves. It was as if they had turned to glass, and any moment they would smash to shards. I couldn’t refuse their request.

I knew that this was perhaps the last bit of kindness that I could ever offer them.

So I did it. Because they quite possibly loved my daughters as much as I did, and because they had been possibly the closest thing I would ever get to having sons, I did it.

I asked all three of them to lie down on their beds—Brick on his bed next to Blossom’s bed, Boomer next to Bubbles, and Butch next to Buttercup—and did just what they had asked of me. I gave them an anesthesia to fall calmly, powerlessly asleep. And I watched their eyelids close for the last time.

And they didn’t wake up. The mighty wave of their comatose states took over after 12 hours of sleep. So I hooked them up to life support, just as I had to with the girls. I lined up all six beds in a row. Limp body after limp body. Listened to their 6 respirators expand and collapse.

Over these last months, I had watched bit by bit, as my world crumbled to pieces before my very eyes due to my own hubris. Because of the boys’ request, I completed the last of the destruction with my very hands.

And then I truly was alone.

It had been a few days since then.

I spent much of my time in here, in the hospital ward, just staring down at them. Torturing myself with all my regret and guilt. Going through all the ways that I, in hindsight, could have prevented this all from happening to me—to all of us. I worked through all of the precautions I could have taken; such as monthly—no—weekly health checkups. Constant monitoring. I could have seen it as it started to happen—the destruction.

I could have started my research years in advance. I could have developed a solution just in time. Before it was too late.

I knew that now it was too late.

But I couldn’t keep from locking myself in my office, rifling through my files for the thousandth time, searching for anything I could have missed. Going through all of my notebooks and notebooks of notes. Flipping frantically through my books for a new piece of information to magically appear to me, a miracle solution that could surely manifest out of nowhere.

Then, habitually, I’d go straight to my experiment lab where I’d started and then stopped that one wretched, impossible project—the invention that wouldn’t invent itself, and yet I could make no heads or tails of myself. I would stare at it until my vision became sightless and blurry, then collapse into a heap on the countertop, quaking like the cowardly mouse that I was.

I had promised Bubbles that I wouldn’t give up. _Promised_. And none of them had known about my attempts at inventing this solution.

But it was too late to do anything now, even if I were to complete it. And deep down I knew I had already lost everything.

In my current tormented state, I of course got little to zero sleep every night. How could I, in my circumstances? My mind was spiraling from lack of sleep, and yet every time I closed my eyes, all I saw were my girls suffering. Suffering because of me.

My agonized mind begged for sleep, and yet my mind made sure that I would never get a regular night of rest possibly ever again.

Finally, out of desperation one night, I opened up my long-abandoned liquor cabinet, which had always been well hidden from the girls. I drank, and I drank some more, forcing my body to shut down into unconsciousness. When I awoke several hours later, bleary-eyed, hungover and utterly debilitated, I wished for death. Not just wished—I _craved_ it.

I thought of some old prescription pills I had high up in my medicine cabinet. I wondered if I had enough left that taking the rest of them all at once would kill me. Maybe I didn’t have enough. Maybe it would just be enough to destroy my brain and organs, and I would remain a vegetable—an ill-fated coward stuck inside his own broken mind until his body finally gave up.

I had no family left. No siblings. God knew where my parents were, if they were still alive. No significant other. No daughters, anymore. Who would miss me?

No one. And there was no one and nothing that would fill the gaping emptiness inside of me.

These days of darkness bled so seamlessly into each other that I began to lose track of time.

I no longer knew what day it was, or what time of the day it was. I spent my nights weeping until I was hysterical, and I spent my days lying awake in my misery. I didn’t leave the house, either. I ordered hot food to be delivered and ordered all of my groceries—I barely had any appetite, and I considered starving myself, but then I would peer guiltily into the hospital ward at my girls, I’d think of how their ability to eat was taken from them. Then I would force myself to eat a meal.

I would give the delivery people extra tips to come through the back gate to the back door. And if any prying questions were asked by them, the door would be slammed in their faces without a single word from me.

As the days passed and it became longer and longer that the girls and boys hadn’t been seen in public, the press became more insistent. Ringing the doorbell at odd hours of the day, calling the house. The phone rang constantly.

The girls’ phones—which I kept charged for them, though I didn’t know exactly why I did, except for maybe a sense of normalcy—constantly pinged and vibrated with text notifications and hotline notifications and phone calls. At some point, I saw the Mayor’s caller ID show up when the home phone rang. I still didn’t answer.

I knew better than to look at what people were saying on the Internet. I turned my Wi-Fi off to resist any temptation.

More time passed.

And during one equally dark day, after I woke up smelling like bourbon and wandered emptily into my office, I began flipping through my notes for what was probably the thousandth time.

And I didn’t realize that I wasn’t alone until that terrifying voice erupted the dead silence.

“Gracious, you smell awful. When was the last time you showered? And did you sleep in a brewery?” The airy, lackadaisical voice had an echo surrounding it, and it pulsed through the space of the room like a negative spike of electricity.

Every hair on my body stood up at once.

I spun around, grabbing the nearest object to me—it happened to be a pencil. A pencil that hadn’t even been sharpened in days. Despite its’ uselessness, I wielded the dull thing in front of me anyway. I couldn’t afford to be empty-handed in this situation. Because there he was, sitting before me in all his otherworldly, frightening glory—Him.

Long limbed, unsettling crimson skin contrasted against his all-black designer clothes of some sort—save for the ginormous, fluffy pink collar that poofed out in all directions to the height of his cheekbones. Several feet in the air, close to the ceiling, he was sitting on what seemed to be levitating, curling, pink mist—it was translucent, but he was sitting on it like it was a solid chair. His legs were crossed at the knee, his arms were folded with his sharp claws tucked under each elbow, and his contemptuous black gaze was locked directly on me, his nose wrinkled in disgust. Then, with a strange wariness, the villain greeted me. “Hello, Scientist.”

I couldn’t hide my terror at the sudden appearance of this malevolent villain in my laboratory—it was as if he had materialized out of nowhere. Perhaps he had. “W-What are you doing here? Get out of my home!” I lifted the pencil higher as Him levitated closer to me, mist and all. “Stop right there! I’m warning you! I’ll…I’ll call the police!” Even saying that felt rather stupid. As if even the Townsville Police Department would help me now.

The pencil I held suddenly tugged out of my clenched fingers by an invisible force. As I watched in horror, it floated away from me a few feet in the air—then, completely on its’ own, snapped in half and dropped to the floor.

I jumped, and reaching blindly behind me, I grasped a pen. Taking another backwards step away from Him, with my shaking hand, I held out the pen threateningly, beads of sweat beginning to gather on my forehead. “Don’t come any closer!”

Him eyed my pen, seeming to deliberate over whether or not he wanted to snap it in half also, but to my surprise, the villain snorted. “Oh, would you relax? You look rather pathetic like that. And don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t come here to kill you.” He sniffed, looking almost…affronted.

I stared at Him, pen still outstretched, staying guarded and silent.

Legs uncrossing, Him stood on his pink cloud is it moved closer to the ground—then he gracefully touched down to the linoleum floor, his high heeled shoes clicking against it. He continued, smoothing his jacket sleeves with sharp red claws, “Really, now. I have much better things to do with my time than to squash little cockroach humans such as yourself. And much more pride, I’d like to think.” His black lips curved upward smugly in the corners.

Very slowly, warily, I lowered the pen slightly. His towering height and very aura was utterly unnerving. All of the instincts inside of me were screaming to defend myself and escape. As I stared at him, I thought through all of my possible escape routes. There weren’t many. The front door was very far away. But in the hospital ward, there was a window—it was in a window well, but it was there. It was the only window in the entire basement. Could I climb out of it? Could I even outrun Him quickly enough to get there in my hungover state?

I squinted at Him, asking distrustfully, “Then…why are you here?”

Him sighed somewhat irritably. “I can tell that you still want to run. However, if it will help convince you that I mean you no harm today, I will be frank with you about why I am here.” Abruptly, his smirk faded. Him stared at me, strange, alien-like eyes severe and hard. “It’s simple. I’ve come to tell you that you can’t let those super-powered nuisances die.”

A silent moment passed. Then another. Then another. I didn’t understand. I shook my head, not comprehending what this creature had just told me.

I was certain I had just imagined Him saying that. Maybe, in my crushing grief, I was hallucinating this whole exchange. That seemed much more likely than Him actually saying something like that, or Him even showing up here at all. Only I didn’t dare pinch myself in this moment, just in case it was real. I blinked at him, then finally bit out, “What?”

He sent me an impatient look, sighing once again. “Work with me, here. You’re not deaf, Utonium. You heard me.” Him turned his chin up to me, sharp goatee aimed at me like a gun. “I told you to save them. So do it.”

I didn’t even know where to start with an answer for such an order. There were so many questions flying around in my mind that I didn’t know which one to articulate. Eventually, the one that I settled on was, “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” The question came out breathless, pained.

Dry, Him said as he folded his arms again, “Not hard enough. Clearly.”

“But I _have_ been.” I backed away a step, my leg colliding with the chair behind me. I grabbed the back of it so that I wouldn’t fall. “You have no idea what it would take,” I told the strange villain, despite my remaining wariness. “What _lengths_ I would have to go to.” I didn’t know why I was humoring this conversation, except that maybe I was curious to see where this would lead. Hopefully it wouldn’t lead to my demise. If I had to leave this Earth, I had hoped it would not be at the hands of a demon.

“I know exactly what you have to do,” said Him evenly, looking at me through a lidded gaze, in an almost bored manner. “You have to finish creating Chemical Y. You have to finish what you’ve barely started.”

The shock burst inside of me like a short circuit. _How_ had he known? Had he been watching me? Had he been watching all of us?

Somehow, knowing he knew precisely what I had to do made me even more upset. It added another 10 tons of weight on my shoulders. My legs gave out at once, and I slumped down onto the chair. “You don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know _how_ I could. Chemical X took years for me to discover, years of trial and error. I can’t even understand the composition of this chemical I’m meant to be developing. It’s…utterly impossible. Far beyond my understanding and capability, and perhaps for any scientist alive. By the time I could even develop a working version of this Chemical Y, it would be far too late. I would be old and gray. And if Chemical X was flawed, how could _I_ create some sort of flawless upgraded version of it? I couldn’t. It’s hopeless.” My face was buried in my hands. I had thought about this process over and over, and each time I thought about it, it just filled me even further with misery. To myself, so low that I thought Him wouldn’t be able to hear it, I whispered, “I can’t do it.”

Him’s reply came bluntly. “Well of course _you_ can’t,” he said with a light, mocking laugh. He went on, “Yes, there are even things the great Professor Utonium can’t figure out by himself. And on top of that, you’re already graying and wrinkling like a prune. You humans age like house flies.” A flare of genuine aggravation lit up inside of me at that. He was wearing on my already thin patience. Him went on, “You may be a genius by Earth’s standards, sure, but you’re not limitless.” There was a pause, one where I presumed that Him was watching me—it felt like he was. Then, quieter, Him said, “But I am. That’s why I’m going to do it for you.”

A moment of long silence echoed. Then, very slowly, I lifted my face from my hands and looked at him. “What?”

A slow, succinct nod. “You heard correctly. I’m choosing to save your pathetic reputation and help you.”

My face had drained, and my throat had gone dry. Was I not hallucinating after all? Was this really happening? For another long moment, I didn’t even know what to say. So, being the intelligent and articulate scientist that I am, I replied, “Oh.”

The villain rolled his eyes and said, “However, if I’m going to do this, here’s the deal. No one knows I was here, and they will never know.” Him said, breezing past me as I watched. The huge pink fuzzy collar of his extravagant suit jacket stirred whenever he moved. “Ever. For as long as you live, you will not tell a living soul. And if you tell anybody, I will slit your throat with my bare claws.” He spun, facing me again, sharp severe eyebrows raised high. “Deal?”

Finally, I mustered the courage to ask a timid question. “Why would you show up here to help me?”

He turned, facing mostly away from me again he was standing in the doorway, looking down the hallway at what I assumed was the doorway of the hospital ward. “Maybe I don’t want to see those brats die this way. Maybe I want to mess with them forever.” He paused, staring blankly now. “And since the boys are technically part my creation too, I think I should have a hand in saving them. I can’t stand to see them go to waste this way.”

I watched him still, straightening my glasses. The lenses were straining my eyes and making my hangover headache throb worse, but unfortunately I still needed them to see. I asked the villain another question. “But if I enlisted your help, how when I know you won’t try to kill them?”

Him burst out in a dry, hard laugh as he turned to face me again. “Do you think I would go to these complicated lengths to kill them, and while they were at their weakest?” He rolled his eyes. “lf I had truly wanted to kill them, I would have done it already. I would have long ago crushed them like ants.”

I eyed him distrustfully, unable to be sure if I could trust what he was saying to me. “You don’t want to kill them?”

Him shook his head once, straight faced. “Never have.” He paused, eyebrows lifting, then he shrugged a shoulder delicately, admitting, “Okay. Erase everyone in Townsville’s memories of them and make them all turn against the girls with murderous inclinations, yes. That was just that one time. Just a bit of fun. But kill them myself?” He scoffed. “Come now. Where would the fun be in that?”

Remembering the mind-control incident from over a decade ago, I cringed in discomfort. Still distrustful, I continued. “How do I know you wouldn’t mess them up in some way? Make it so they’ll all belong to you, or something.”

Him smiled an unsettling, fanged, painted-black smile. “I am not such a selfish creature, Utonium. I’m crafty, but not impatient. Why do you assume that I would take one of my true pleasures away from myself, and in so easily a way?” His mouth twitched. “Frankly, I’m insulted.”

“Let me have your word,” I told him. I didn’t know how trustful his word was, but I still needed it so I could stop feeling like I was going to be fighting for my life at any moment.

“You have it, Utonium. You have my word,” said Him. He was still smirking.

I examined him for a moment. Him watched me back, unflinching. Nodding, I said, “Thank you.” Then I said, “But why do you care about what happens to them? Truly. Be honest with me. That’s one thing I just can’t understand about this,” I said, frowning. “The boys I understand, because like you said, to an extent they’re partly yours. But…the girls. Why would you want to save the girls as well? They don’t mean a thing to you. Why not just come here to save the boys alone?”

Him paused for what seemed to me like endless seconds. The look of contempt and amusement wiped off of his face. Replacing it was a graveness that made him look ancient.

Finally, he said, in a voice so quiet that it took me by surprise, “Let me put this bluntly, in a way that you can understand. I have lived a long time. Longer than your brain could comprehend.” Him gave me a measured look, looking strangely wizened. “I existed before this Earth did. I existed when this galaxy began to form from featureless bodies of gas and rock. I traveled all the dimensions in existence for eons without ever speaking, without ever meeting another living being that interested me. And then this world of yours finally came to be. For centuries upon centuries, and then for centuries after that, and more after that, I made this planet my residence. But still I rarely found other beings that interested me.”

I had been stunned into awed silence, listening to him. Of all the things I might have expected him to say, this had not been any of it.

The villain stared down at the floor, at his own shiny shoes, continuing, “Let’s just say that I lacked any sort of purpose for a very, very long time. This way of living that I have now…though you and every other human may not like it, though you may despise it and fear it, I’m finally living as my truest self, to my fullest potential as the being that I am. And in their own way…the girls and boys alike…they remind me of that. They challenge me—in an amusing way, of course. However, playing with them…it gives me something. Their passion when they protect all you humans and creatures, and your ways of life—I am not a creature that can be easily surprised, Scientist. I see all. And yet…they always find some way to surprise me.” Him fixed his gaze on me again, unsettling black staring through me. “I feel as if…those things that challenged me are being taken from me. Taken from me just after I’ve discovered them. And that…enrages me. Deeply. And at first I passively observed what has happened, thinking that would be enough, and that I had no business getting involved in this…but I was wrong. I cannot tolerate it.”

So that was what it was. To Him, they were his toys. And now his toys were being taken away. That reason made sense, considering a creature like Him couldn’t possibly feel something like compassion or sympathy. He was here for his own gain.

Feeling as if I had caught a glimpse of something impossible, a fantastical worldview that I maybe never would have gotten to hear so candidly in my lifetime, especially if I had become a doctor like my mother had wanted, I accepted the things he told me immediately. They felt strangely sacred. I got the distinct feeling that I was possibly the only living soul he had told this to. Respectfully, I changed the subject slightly, feeling that prodding about what I’d been told would be rude and unwelcome. “What about Mojo? How does he feel about what is happening to the boys and girls?”

Him’s reply was clipped and bitter. “He’s gone.”

This curt reply surprised me. “What?”

“Mojo knew about what was happening to the boys and girls. I told him. And through his new knowledge of their Chemical X failing, he realized that it was affecting him, too.” Him turned, handing me a slip of paper that had inexplicably materialized in his claw out of nowhere. Hesitantly, I took it. After I took it, he said, “The Chemical X faded in him, too. He’s just a monkey now. He can’t help us. Read it for yourself.” He stared at me. “It’s up to us.”

Giving him one last, unsure glance, I opened up the folded piece of paper. At the top, it said, ‘FROM THE DESK OF MOJO JOJO’. Quietly, I read the compelling, disturbing letter that Mojo had written. It detailed the ways that his de-transformation had happened, and in the end, begged the reader to either contact me to help him, or for the reader to take his place as Mojo Jojo.

Finishing reading it with a heavy sigh and a shake of my head, I handed the letter back to the red devil in front of me. “Goodness,” I said under my breath. “Perhaps I should have guessed this would happen. I was so preoccupied with the kids that I forgot that Mojo…” I trailed off. I didn’t know what else to say.

With a brusque nod of agreement, Him took the letter back, folded it back up, and it disappeared into thin air again. “Strangely, I didn’t know either. Not until it was too late. I had my back turned on him for just _one moment_ , and—” Him stopped suddenly, clearing his throat. Then he folded his arms. “Nevertheless, that’s another reason I’m here. To see if we could possibly save that maniac.”

I considered this for a few long moments. Getting Him’s help—his unlimited, powerful help—to save these kids would be invaluable. But would I risk bringing Mojo back just to have my girls? Could I live with the consequences?

Putting off the decision for a little longer, wanting to think about it more rather than make a rash decision, I asked the villain warily, “Why would you want to help _anybody?_ You’re evil, aren’t you?”

He raised a neat eyebrow. “Evil is relative.” Him cocked his head. “What does the word ‘evil’ mean to you?”

I took a moment to think. I leaned back in the chair I sat on. “Evil is the opposite of good,” I finally said. I thought that this definition seemed simple enough to be true.

“I see,” Him replied, shifting his weight to his other hip, arms still folded. He smirked down at me. “Then what does the word ‘good’ mean to you?”

I couldn’t help but think that this felt like one of his riddles. I thought harder this time. Carefully, I said, “To me, ‘good’ means…pure. Harmless.”

“ _Purity?_ ” Startling me, Him burst into a laugh. It was booming, and it hurt my head. “You scientist types. So analytical. You always see things in absolutes, in black and white. I’ve got news for you, Utonium. Things don’t work that way. In this universe or any.”

Flummoxed at his rebuff, I asked the villain, “What do you mean?”

Him continued to laugh, shaking his head, beginning a slow pace around my office. “You’re all the same. All your laws are written to keep you in place, and for what? They’re broken anyway, even occasionally by your own law enforcement.” His amused expression began to fade, contempt taking its’ place as the tone of his voice sharpened. “You think laws and constructs make you good. You think doing everything right while everyone is watching makes you a saint. It doesn’t. You humans? Hypocrites. Maybe you would see that if you weren’t so busy condemning each other and tearing each other apart like starved tigers. Look at your histories. Isolating those that are different from you. Enslaving and killing those you deem not as human as you are. Fights to the death in arenas full of screaming spectators. That, Professor Utonium, is evil. If you ask me, goodness doesn’t exist. Not readily, at any rate. Not in this world.”

My throat had gone dry, watching him pace to and fro and listening to his vehement ranting. “Fair enough,” I said. He had a point. Several good points, actually.

Him went on, his gaze scrutinizing me. “Maybe you considered Mojo evil, but at his very core, was he really? Think of where he came from. He was born a mere animal. An animal with no ability to form intelligent thought, no ability to have grand ideas, no personality. You inadvertently gave him all of that with the Chemical X. He gained a soul. And with that soul, he chose how he wanted to live. Just because he chose a life different from yours, it doesn’t mean he was inherently evil. You throw that word around so easily, but what does it _really_ mean to you? When does a person or being cross over from being misunderstood or eccentric or _different_ to evil? Where does the line lie?”

I was nearly speechless. What was I to say to those provoking arguments? I nodded slowly, relenting. “I can’t argue with that. You make very good points.” Pausing a moment, I continued. “I admit that I don’t have the knowledge to answer those questions. That being said, according to my personal beliefs and morals, Mojo was indeed evil. And so are you.”

Him looked at me, not smirking this time, but at the same time having a smirking light in his eyes. “’Evil is a point of view’, Utonium. Maybe to some, you’re the evil one. You certainly were to Mojo.”

I nodded again, accepting the fair blow. Perhaps everyone was, indeed, evil to someone else to a certain degree. Even if they didn’t realize it. I leaned forward in my chair again, then stood up. “So, with this whole argument, I’m guessing you mean to tell me that though you aren’t particularly good, you aren’t so evil that you would refuse to help someone when you might get something out of it as well. Is that correct?”

The villain before me let a few seconds pass as he looked at me. Then a giant, toothy leer spread across his face. His teeth were such a bright white that they almost hurt to look at. “Congratulations, Professor. You’re living up to your name.”

For a moment, the absurdity of the situation hit me all at once as I pictured how we might look standing face-to-face like this: on one end, an aging, disheveled, human scientist, and on the opposing side, an otherworldly, immortal, six-foot tall humanoid demon dressed in heels and Prada. Complete opposites, and now an unlikely team in the pursuit of science.

I took a deep breath, then sighed. “All right, Him. If we’re going to do this, I have to ask you some questions first. I need some answers, and I know you have them.” I paused impassively, folding my arms as Him crooked an eyebrow. I added, “Only then will I feel like I can trust you enough to work together.”

Him smiled again. Wide, baring blinding whites within black, glossy lips, almost lecherous in its’ enjoyment. I couldn’t help but squirm in discomfort at the appearance of it. Him said, “Then consider me an open book, Scientist. Ask me your questions. I’m sure I can guess at what they might be. The meaning of life, maybe? Bigfoot? Or the secret to time travel? Crop circles, perhaps?” He leaned forward, whispering indulgently as he added, “between you and me, around half of those crop circles are created by me. I consider them a hobby of mine. Certainly passes the time.”

Ignoring his smug comments, rolling my eyes, I went forward with my first question. “So, Him, tell me. In that letter, Mojo says that he and someone else were the ones that made all of those white Chemical X monsters that the girls and boys were fighting late last year. Do you know who was working with him?”

Him’s smugness abruptly faded at my question, and he blinked at me in surprise. “Of course I know who it was. It was I. Didn’t you know?” Him added straightforwardly, “It was Mojo and I. Along with that dreadful Morbucks girl. Her millionaire father was the one that funded the whole project. Could have sworn you had figured that out already.”

Jolting, I stared at Him in shock. So it was all three of them. No wonder the girls couldn’t pin it all down on one single villain. “No, we didn’t know. None of us knew.” I stopped, flummoxed, then said, “Wait a minute. Morbucks? Princess Morbucks? But why would she work with either of you?”

A slow side grin. “She had always hated those girls. She hated the boys, too. She wanted them all gone. As did Mojo, obviously. It was an indulgent revenge scheme for the both of them.”

I ruminated over this in awe. “I can’t believe it. I knew she didn’t like the girls, and for a while when they were kids, she was a real nuisance for them, but I didn’t think…” I trailed off, shaking my head. “How did she even get involved with you two?”

Taking a deep breath, Him leaned his elbows back against the countertop behind him and began. “Well, when Mojo approached her, asking her to fund his plan to ruin the girls’ and boys’ statuses and then rid of all of them for good, she couldn’t resist. They had already worked together before, and she was the only one still willing to team up with him after his reputation in the villain community had become so dreadful. She also hadn’t had the best track record in her villainess career, after all, and it’s not like anyone really wanted to work with her, either. She had been out of the business for ages, and such a hiatus is usually unwelcome for a crime partner, but Mojo really had no other options. So the two of them came to me, needing my powers to help create the most horrifying creatures imaginable. Creatures that would be nearly impossible to defeat in 1 on 1 battle. Hundreds of them. The plan seemed desirable, so I agreed. I hadn’t joined in on anything fun in years, and it was good to get back in the game.

“The creatures were of my design, of course, and I designed the overlapping circles symbol as well, with one circle to represent each of us. I designed the creatures to be nightmarish in appearance, with unsettling human features at the same time. Their designs were meant to symbolically represent the monstrous sides of humanity. Quite artistic of me, I should say.

“They were also designed to appeal to each of the girls’ weaknesses. Bubbles’ aversion to insects, Buttercup’s bloodlust, Blossom’s tendency to overanalyze her opponents and rely heavily on her mind. I wasn’t anticipating the boys’ help during each battle, though. We had been counting on the girls fighting them solo. Mojo’s schemes _did_ always have flaws. I suppose that’s where the plan was flawed.” He paused. “That, and the cloned Chemical X that Morbucks girl’s multi-million-dollar super computer designed. None of us had any idea that the clone chemical would burn out so quickly. We also didn’t know the real Chemical X, which her father had bought a sample of from the Townsville Science Museum, was burning out. Not until you discovered it too late.” He looked down, pinching his black lips together hard. “Not until it was too late for Mojo. That stupid, hopeless bastard.”

Coming back down from my jolt of surprise at hearing that Mr. Morbucks had bought my Chemical X donation from the museum, I eyed the strange villain across from me. If I didn’t know any better, it would seem like Him was upset about Mojo returning to his full chimp state. Whether he was sad, or just angry, though, was a mystery to me. I decided to change the subject back to the young villainess. “What happened to Princess when the monsters collapsed dead during the big battle?”

Seeming to recover from his brief moment of upset, Him answered, “For a few days, she launched a smear campaign against the girls and boys. Paid several media sources heavily to twist the story to make it seem like the girls and boys were washed up, useless superheroes.”

I nodded slowly. That had explained the ridiculous media outrage. They’d been paid to do it.

Him continued. “It accomplished at least _one_ aspect of the original plan. But when the public backlash didn’t last as long as we’d all been hoping for, she just left. Cursed at us as if it was our fault that we’d failed, took all her money, and left. Greedy little bitch. And I thought your girls were the unbearable brats.” After saying that, his eyes slid in my direction again. “No offense,” he said slyly.

I only cleared my throat, folding my arms.

Him went on, “Honestly, though. That Princess girl is unbelievable. She’s pursuing modeling now. _Modeling_. So much villain potential inside of her, so much potential to become _my_ protégé, and she’s squandering it on the fickle fashion industry.”

I shrugged a shoulder, somehow amused at his outrage over her choice of career. “You never know. She could change her mind, one day.” He directed a glare at me, seeming to catch my sarcastic tone, and I immediately sobered up again. “You know…I suppose in a way, I should thank you.”

He made a giant, full-bodied recoil like I’d suddenly transformed into a rotten egg. “Disgusting. Don’t be so absurd. Why on Earth would you thank me for anything?”

I thought for a moment, and then I just came out with it. “Well, without your aid in the creation of those monsters, I wouldn’t have known what was ailing these kids until it was really too late. In a strange way, you’ve already helped.” I nodded at him solemnly. “So, thank you.”

Him had the strangest look on his face. He certainly wasn’t used to being thanked by anyone, let alone me. He cleared his throat, looking very uncomfortable. “Do me a favor, Utonium, and keep your thanks to yourself. I already know that you’re grateful for my being here, so let’s not make this more uncomfortable than it already is.” He away walked to the other side of the office again, heading to the door, his high heels popping against the tile floors. “So if you’re done asking me these frivolous questions, let’s just get this done with.”

After I followed him out of the office, I showed Him where I kept my lab coats, he shouldered one on—making sure the furry collar of his jacket underneath still showed, though the sleeves were too short on his long arms—and we got quickly to work.

I showed him my blueprints for Chemical Y, along with all of my equations and all of my notes. Immediately, Him began showing me where parts of my plan were flawed, and which parts had potential. We discussed these back and forth for an hour—and then my stomach growled. Loudly.

“I forgot you humans have to consume things to stay alive,” Him muttered to me ten minutes later. He was a few feet behind me, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching me haphazardly throwing a sandwich together. After another moment or two of silence, he grumbled, “Would you hurry up and eat that, please? It’s not as if you’re on a cooking competition reality show. Does there really have to be so many ingredients?”

Five minutes later, Him remained impatient as he watched me uneasily eat the sandwich under his gaze, bite by bite. I chewed as he sighed, shifted in his seat, and tapped his foot against the kitchen floor.

When I was finished eating, we immediately got to work on the new blueprints for Chemical Y.

Step by crucial step, we figured out how to build upon Chemical X’s strengths and eliminate its’ faults. We decided to keep its’ radioactive qualities, but gave it more balance so that it wouldn’t become unstable and burn out eventually. Him figured out how to give it more longevity, explaining to me that we had to strengthen its’ structure. “This way it won’t collapse. Ever,” Him said to me when he was done explaining and writing the intricate equation down in his elegant handwriting. It was algebraic, but seemed to be some ancient form of algebra—I could have sworn that a portion of it was written in Greek.

I stared down at it, amazed. How had I never seen that myself? This was perfect. It was going to be perfect.

There was one thing, however: the radioactive quality of this chemical would be, though more balanced, stronger. More potent. How _much_ more potent it would be, though, we wouldn’t know until the experimental phase.

The day after that, we began the development of Chemical Y. At first, Him petulantly insisted that he just poof it into existence and get the boys and girls to ingest it right away. Aghast, I argued that it would take several stages of experiments to make sure that the chemical was just right, so that no mistakes were made. We couldn’t risk botching or poisoning them.

I also added that, when the time came, their bodies would have to be fully soaked in the chemical so that it would absorb into their cells via osmosis, since their unconscious selves were in no shape to ingest anything. Grudgingly, the villain agreed, and after I gathered the necessary elements and equipment we would need, we got started on the first precarious phase.

Watching Him use his powers in the lab as if it was nothing was terrifying to behold—fascinating, but terrifying. Mostly I just looked away as he used them, or looked at him only in short intervals, or else I would get too uneasy and even a little dizzy. Every time he used them, it felt like the oxygen was physically being sucked out of the room. At my request, he only used them sparingly.

After many, many hours of slaving away, a full day in fact, the first tentative development of Chemical Y was completed.

Its’ appearance was much different from how Chemical X looked—instead of being solid black, Chemical Y was silver and shimmery. That aspect of it had been Him’s idea, of course. It was slightly more viscous, almost sticky, and it was opaque. And when it was freshly made, it glowed—its’ glow had a kind of LED quality to it. It was so bright that I had to wear sunglasses underneath my lab goggles.

That day ended, and I went to sleep up in my bedroom.

“What about you?” I had asked Him before I began to climb the stairs. He had come upstairs to the living room to sit calmly on our white couch, legs crossed. It was perhaps the strangest thing I had ever beheld in my own home.

Him smirked up at me. “I don’t do that thing that you call sleep. I don’t need to.” He lifted a claw, making a shooing gesture at me. “Go on, go ahead. I’ll be in and out, find other things to do. I’ll return by morning.”

The day after, just as he said, Him returned. And after I ate some toast and had some coffee, we went straight to work. We started with the first phase of experimentation: reactions to living necessities, starting with water. Very carefully, I added a small drop of water to an even smaller sample of Chemical Y.

 _BOOM_.

Unharmed, but startled backward from the violent, explosive reaction, I fell off of the stool I was sitting on. Him only stared down at me on the floor for a few moments. Then, lips pressed together as he nodded, he remarked, “Back to square one.”

After a bit of digging, we found the compound that had reacted so adversely with H2O. We replaced the problem element with one that was similar, but not as reactive. Thus began the second development of Chemical Y.

This one passed a few more tests. It passed the water test, the carbon test, and the acid test. However, when we moved on to the temperature tests in my simulation room, it froze solid with relative ease, at barely 2 degrees below freezing. That would certainly not do. So, back to the drawing board we went.

Chemical Y 3.0 went slightly better, and it handled the first temperature test well, not freezing and keeping its form even down to -400 degrees Fahrenheit. We thought we might really have a winner this time—until the next test, when it boiled and then spontaneously _burst into flames_ at temperatures just slightly above 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

After some adjustments, then came Chemical Y 4.0. It held its’ own in extremely freezing temperatures, perfectly performed within 3000-degree heat.

Encouraged, we went onto the next phase of experiments. We treated a number of small potted plants with the chemical to see how they would react, or if the chemical would destroy them.

We left them overnight—I slept as Him helped himself to my movie collection, remarking that he didn’t feel like leaving this time. He hadn’t watched any human movies in a while and he needed _something_ to do while I was ‘lying around shutting [my] body off’, in his own words.

In the morning, we went back into the experiment lab. All of the plants had disintegrated into ash.

Figuring out the solution to this one was more difficult.

“Why is it so important to you that the chemical can sustain and even nourish carbon based life?” Him asked me suddenly as we were brainstorming in my office. “Why does this matter so much? Can’t we just leave that facet out? We’re so close, Scientist. Can’t we just forget that part, choose 4.0 and end this drudgery?”

I shook my head at Him, brow furrowed. “No, absolutely not,” I insisted. “This feature is vital. It’s what would make giving it to other living creatures possible,” I said pointedly. Catching my meaning, Him’s frustrated expression turned to solemnness. After a few beats, I admitted, “There’s also another reason I want this feature. But it’s a bit personal.”

Him held up a claw. “Got it. Don’t tell me. Please.”

The room was silent for a few minutes as the both of us thought hard in silence. Then, almost hesitantly, Him spoke up again. “I may have an idea. But it’s risky.”

Risky was good. Risky was better than nothing. I spun to face him, expectant. “Let me hear it,” I said.

Him explained to me that if we added a binding agent to the chemical, it might make the chemical able to bond to living things instead of ravaging and burning through it. I wasn’t sure about it, but I was ready to try anything if it might work. We decided to try it with Chemical Y 5.0.

After some trial and error, we found a compatible bonding agent, and went to work with the experiments. All the early phases went without a hitch, every single one. When we finally came upon the plant experiment, we poured a water and Chemical Y mixture into the pots, hoping that the bonded Chemical Y and water would work together to nourish the plants.

We left them overnight, hoping for the best this time, but really expecting it not to work.

Imagine our surprise the next morning at what we saw.

I woke to a sharp claw jostling my shoulder and an echoing voice even louder than it usually was. “Scientist! For crying out loud, get _up!_ Am I going to have to throw searing coffee on you?”

I startled awake. “Ow, that hurts! _Ow!_ What?” I said crankily, still half asleep, leaning away from the villain’s uncomfortable grasp and rubbing my shoulder with my hand. I was hoping he hadn’t broken the skin.

“Well, pardon me,” said Him, agitated even though he was the one that had woken _me_ up in the first place. “I just thought I would rouse you for you to see the rainforest that has grown in your laboratory.”

I stared up at him for a few moments, grogginess falling away as I processed this, and then I leapt from the mattress I’d moved onto the floor of my office, which was where I slept the night before instead of my bedroom all the way on the 2nd floor.

I dashed out of the door, and as soon as I stood in the hallway, I saw the green that spilled out of the doorframe of the experiment lab and into the hallway. It was, indeed, like a forest had grown in there.

“Goodness!” I exclaimed, making my way into the doorway. I pushed giant leaves and stems aside, making my way in.

Him followed leisurely in my stead, smug. “See? I knew it would work,” he said. As a giant leaf suddenly fell and flopped onto the top of his head, he reached up with one claw, snipped the stem it was on and watched as it floated down to the ground. “You’re welcome, by the way,” he added.

I shook my head and turned back around, only allowing myself a wry grin after my face couldn’t be seen.

Until the afternoon, we were clearing the giant, overgrown plants out of the lab. Since we had no place else to put them, we left them all in the backyard.

After that, we only had one experiment left. The animal phase.

Since I could not leave the lab myself, I asked Him to go get it for me—a lab rat. When he returned to the house after half an hour, with a white rat in its’ own pet cage complete with a water bottle and small play tunnels, I decided not to ask where he’d gotten it to keep our truce partnership intact.

We poured a small bowl of Chemical Y for the rat to take a bath in, and with my lab gloves on, I covered the little guy thoroughly in it. We left him overnight, locking the laboratory door just in case.

The next morning, we returned to find it dead in its’ cage.

“Oh dear,” I murmured. Failure of this experiment, the last and most difficult stage, had been certainly imminent. But I still couldn’t help but feel disappointed. I took my notebook out, adding onto the pages of notes I already had on Chemical Y. At the very bottom in the section for 5.0, I wrote, ‘Works wonderfully with organic life. Has adverse effect on mammals—lethal.’

After brainstorming again for a while, looking over the properties of the chemical and running circles around all the work we’d already done, we came upon a realization—there was nothing left for us to change.

If we switched out any properties, we would risk completely ridding of the positive properties we had worked hard on establishing for this chemical, things that Chemical X did not have. We would risk demolishing all our hard work. I didn’t think either of us wanted to start over completely at this point, especially if finding a solution this time wasn’t at all guaranteed.

And Chemical Y in its’ state now, which would become its’ final form—if it could kill a rat in just a handful of hours, it would certainly kill a chimp too.

There was nothing we could do. Mojo was gone. Gone for good.

Silence passed between us, grim. When I took a quick glance at the villain, I saw a flash of grief pass over his face before it smoothed out unemotionally again, like a ripple over a calm body of water.

A slow, tense nod. “I suppose,” Him said, his voice uncharacteristically somber, “that this is for the best, in the end. He struggled with his own intelligent existence, constantly feeling like nothing he did was ever good enough. He always had.” Slowly, reluctantly, Him turned his face toward me, though he still kept his glittering dark eyes turned downward. “Better he live the rest of his days out as a happy, stupid chimp than to continue to be tortured by his own inadequacies.”

This time, listening to the tall, inhuman villain talk about his unfortunate ally, I knew and realized that he really was sad. That in their own twisted way, they had been close. Maybe they’d only had each other to call family, toxic as it was.

And perhaps seeing Him this way should have disturbed me, but if anything, it only challenged everything I had previously known to be true. Much more than anything else that had happened to me in the past week.

So for his sake, I said very quietly, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Him stayed quiet at first. Then, slowly, he shook his head bitterly. “You humans,” he said, voice dry, “always futilely sorry for things you have no control over.”

#

That night, Him placed the folded, borrowed lab coat on the counter top in the lab. I had told him that he really didn’t have to fold it, but he’d done it anyway. He now donned his full black designer clothes exclusively again.

Him said to me in a quiet voice, “You’ll have to disconnect them all from life support and submerge them fully into the chemical. Their hearts will likely stop. But once the Chemical Y absorbs fully into their bodies, it should revive them, if all of our hard work holds true. I’ll leave that last phase up to you.” Earlier, he had briefly gone into the hospital ward to stare at all 6 of the kids with an expression I couldn’t really read. I had wondered why, but of course knew better than to ask. He shifted, looking at me again. “My role here is done, so I’m going to take my leave.”

So this was really it. He was leaving for good. I began hesitantly, “I just wanted to thank—”

Him cut me off, aghast. “I told you _not to—”_

I held my hands up defensively and interrupted, “Okay, okay. Sorry. I won’t say it,” I said. “Just know that…I feel a lot of gratitude towards you.”

“That was the same thing. You only reworded it. I’m still deeply disturbed by your gratitude.” Him straightened up, clearing his throat. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that he was flustered. “And don’t think that this makes us _friends_ of any sort. We are one-time allies, and that is all. From the moment I leave this laboratory, we will act as if none of this happened. Understood?”

I nodded once, trying very hard not to smile. “Understood,” I said. Though he didn’t want to accept my gratitude, it would always be there. It would be inside of me for the rest of my life, and maybe even after that.

I didn’t dare say this to Him, but that day that he had appeared in my office, he had saved my life. He’d saved all of our lives.

I think he knew this, too. It was probably why he refused to acknowledge it out loud. Maybe because he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that he had done something selfless and good. No doubt, if news got out that the almighty powerful supervillain Him had done something good, his reputation would be ruined.

I would keep his secret for him. As my thank you, that’s would I would do. For now. Maybe I would find some way to tell the girls one day, maybe long after I would already be gone and Him could do nothing but scream at and threaten my bones.

“I mean it, Scientist,” Him insisted, narrowing his eyes at me, almost as if he had read my mind. But I was pretty sure he couldn’t do that. “Breathe one word of it to anyone, and I’ll—“

“Slit my throat, yes, I know.” I cut in, grin slipping onto my face this time. “I understand. Not a word. I promise.”

For a moment, the villain stared at me, blinking at the grin on my face. He looked unsure for a brief second—even slightly uncomfortable. Then it swept away as Him nodded, seeming to accept my answer. “Good,” he said. “Then farewell.” Taking a deep breath, Him summoned his pink fog. It swirled out from behind him, lifting him into the air and drawing him backward into a void.

Before, seeing this would have scared me—but I think at that point in time, considering everything else that had happened, I felt like nothing could surprise me anymore.

Further and further he sunk into the void, and just before Him’s neck and shoulders disappeared into the miasma, as he looked at me, his face suddenly burst into one last mischievous smirk. “And for pity’s sake, Utonium,” he remarked, “go take a shower.”

The image of him swirled away with that, along with the murky, echoing sound of his mocking, shrieking laughter. The pink clouds curled in on themselves, draining into the void. And then Him was gone.

I stared through the space of air that Him had once stood in. I was alone again. And now I had a decision to make. The single biggest decision to make in my entire life.

Him had left this final phase up to me. The ultimate action of saving them—of saving all of their lives.

Now that I had my solution right in front of me, however, several things occurred to me at once. Several daunting, terrifying things.

Immersing these kids in Chemical Y would save my daughter’s lives, and would save the boy’s lives as well. Because I had brought them into this world myself, I could do this for my girls. But what about the boys’ lives? Was I really responsible for their lives also?

And there was more to this action than just saving them. There was only so much I could know about this chemical from our numerous experiments. There was still much about it that I didn’t know. Those things, those unknown things—was I really willing to take that gamble?

This chemical could have any number of effects on these kids. Sure, it could breathe new life into them, I knew. I also knew it could turn them into something else entirely.

It could transform them. It could turn them into monsters. Involuntarily, I thought of that Chemical X monster army from the previous year.

And what of their minds—what of their very souls? What would happen to them? What if they lost first their minds, and then their personalities and souls were lost as well? What if their very essence disappeared the moment the Chemical X was wiped from their systems?

What right did I have to do that to them? Saving them would be one thing. Changing them forever was another entirely.

I wasn’t a god. Was I playing one? Was my hubris yet again blinding me to my faults?

Years ago, I had not known the risk of bringing three girls to life. I had not realized the gamble I had taken when, after accidentally creating three superpowered girls, what keeping them and watching them grow would mean. That—the way a parent never should in a good and merciful world—I would witness their death one day.

Was I being equally foolish now, fighting to keep them alive in such extreme ways? Inventing a brand new chemical with a _villain_ that would extend their life? And who was I forcing them to stay alive for? Just for me? It was not just selfish—it was uncertain.

This was an unbelievably dangerous game I was playing. It could cost my life, I realized. It could cost the lives of civilians in Townsville and beyond if it went wrong. Perhaps even the world.

I remembered the speculation about me that spread worldwide after the creation of my girls—that I was a mad scientist. It hadn’t occurred to me until this very moment that I truly was mad, and perhaps had always been.

I had to be crazy to take these sorts of risks. What I was doing could implode, ruin the world and life as it existed. It could be something that generations of people who lived in this world after me would curse me for, would condemn me for. Perhaps I would go down in history as the maniac that ended the world.

Or maybe it would change everything.

Maybe this world was much worse off without my girls living in it. My girls had already changed the world once. Maybe they wouldn’t just save this world multiple times more, just as they always had before—maybe even without their powers, they would improve this world in countless astounding ways.

My Blossom could lead others with the power of her intelligence alone. My Bubbles could feed the hungry, help the lost, with just the warmth of her heart. My Buttercup could protect the feeble with just the strength of her smallest finger.

The boys needed to return, too—the boys needed the girls. The girls needed them, too. They all needed each other. Without their counterparts, they would lack balance. They all needed their equals to survive in this world.

Life, existence—it needed them. It needed them all. I would bring them back. I had already sold my soul to a devil to do it. And it was my duty. No matter the cost. Even if, in the end, I was just a mad scientist.

It was still risky, though, I knew.

Bringing them back could be like hitting reset on their brains. I knew that they could suffer memory loss, maybe multiple other side effects. They could be completely different people when they awoke—that possibility was most terrifying to me.

But that risk…I had to take it. Because if I didn’t take that risk, the possibility of them never returning would turn from possibility into mere fact. And that, out of everything, was unfathomable to me. It was simply unacceptable. I could not— _would_ not—live in a world where they didn’t exist anymore. If they ceased to exist, so would I.

There was still no sure answer of what the outcome of this decision might be. But my mind was made up. I was going through with this.

And whatever happened next, I would withstand and confront the consequences, no matter what.

In the experiment lab, I set up six metal tubs, side by side. I filled each tub up three fourths full with the metallic, viscous Chemical Y. Then I left to the hospital ward, knowing that the hardest part had come.

I would have to do it quickly. For the sake of ease, for less complications, and for the sake of my sanity.

I started with Buttercup. Steeling my nerves, I took the respirator off her face, and took her off life support. One minute later, her heart monitor flatlined as her heart stopped.

I gathered her limp, frail body in my arms and walked her down the hallway to the experiment lab. Stopping at the nearest tub, with my gloved hands, I stripped her hospital gown off, then picked her up again. I gently began to lower her into the Chemical Y. I placed the mask of the respirator over her mouth and nose so that the chemical wouldn’t enter her lungs. Before her head was submerged, I pressed a soft kiss onto the top of her shaved head. “Come back to me soon,” I whispered to her.

I left back to the hospital ward, only returning with Bubbles’ body in my arms after disconnecting her from life support, after hearing her heart stop. I put the mask on her face, kissed the top of her head, then submerged her into the next tub of Chemical Y, trying not to notice how cold her body felt.

As I left, and then came back, carrying Blossom’s cold body this time, I couldn’t help the tears that rolled down my cheeks or the way my gloved hands trembled. As my knees buckled after I looked down at her, I tried hard to remember that it was just for now. That they would be right back. They would be back soon.

I watched her body sink down into the metallic, shimmery chemical, and then quickly got to work with retrieving each of their heart monitors from the hospital ward. Attaching the connectors with resilient adhesives, I connected each of them to heart monitors.

Then came the treacherous waiting.

For an hour, the single darkest hour in my entire existence, the laboratory was dead silent.

It seemed as if nothing was going to happen. I had given up all hope of anything happening at all. For an endless 60 minutes, my girls were dead. And for those 60 minutes, I was frozen in time.

I truly believe that in those 60 minutes, those endless 3600 seconds, part of me had died.

Never was I, by any measure, a religious man. But during those 60 minutes, for the first time, more than anything, I wished and hoped that heaven was a real place. Because more than anyone else I had ever known, my girls deserved to be there.

I hoped that they were happy, and were doing all the things that they hadn’t been able to do anymore. I hoped that they weren’t afraid anymore, and that they couldn’t feel any more pain or suffering. I hoped that they were flying around and giggling, just as when they were little girls, without any worries.

Because if they could never come back to me, at least I would know that they were okay without me.

The quiet continued. The end of the hour approached.

Just as I was beginning to plan out what I thought I never would have to do, how I could bear to plan a funeral, how I would call the mayor and tell him myself that the girls had passed on, that he could take care of telling the rest, including telling the press—the worst of the torture was over with. It happened all at once.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

The three heart monitors picked up slow, quiet heartbeats. They were so weak, so faint—but they were there.

Their hearts had started again. I jumped from my chair, leaping to turn all three respirators on. The respirators expanded and contracted. They were breathing.

They were alive.

I took a long, deep breath. Released it. It was the first genuine breath I had taken that entire horrible hour. Now that they were breathing, I also could breathe again.

Now that I knew that it was working, that it would work for the boys too, I quickly left to retrieve the boys’ bodies to do the same for them. Disconnected them from life support, heard their hearts stop, one by one. Attached their respirators and heart monitors and dunked them in.

And then an hour after they’d been submerged in their Chemical Y tubs, their hearts also restarted with a slow, timid pulse from each of them.

It was small—and yet, ginormous. It was progress. The most important progress of all, the progress that meant my hard work with Him hadn’t gone to waste. Progress that meant life over death.

They were back. That was all that mattered.

The next three days were filled with more of the same.

Slow heartbeats. Shallow breathing. My observing them in my chair across from their tubs. Because I’d thought of it, I set up my old camcorder on a tripod and aimed it at them. It would record the progress, if there was to be any, that is. I was running on such little sleep, so I couldn’t rely on just my memory and observation for all of this. I had a feeling I would need more than just my notes to keep record of this.

I kept a small supply of food in the basement with me—I never once left them during the day.

I only left them at night, to get a few hours of sleep on my mattress on the floor of my office. I usually only slept from 3 in the morning to 6, if that. And I slept lightly. I tossed and turned, mostly, and slept in what felt like 15 minute intervals.

The fourth day was still the same. The slow heartbeats remained. The unconsciousness remained. All six of them remained in comatose states. I was beginning to wonder if anything at all would change—if the six of them would spend the rest of their days in comas.

And I wondered what kind of life that would mean for me. Hardly any life at all.

I imagined more days spent in the laboratory, just as I had done the past days. Only, it would mean weeks like that. Then months. Years.

I went to sleep that night with this thought in my mind. Just as I was between sleep and exhausted wakefulness on that fourth night, around 4am, that’s when I heard it.

The distant sound of three heart-monitors’ beeps increasing steadfastly.

I forgot about sleeping. Immediately, I shot up from my makeshift mattress-on-the-floor sleeping area and I ran out of the office. I sprinted down the hallway towards the experiment lab, skidded to a slippery stop on the tile floors, and bounded into the lab.

As soon as they were in view, I stared down at the girls’ tubs—they were still stable. None of them were conscious. But still their heart monitors increased in speed, double, triple, four-times the rate. I read the BPM for each of them, still momentarily shaken, wondering what could be causing this to go so wrong—then it dawned on me.

380 bpm. That had been their average heart rate. Their heart rate before all of this began to happen. Before they lost their superpowers, before their health began to fall apart.

The heart rate of three superhumans.

Which meant that three more superhuman heart rates would soon follow.

A smile came to my face, slow and careful at first. Then it grew larger, and larger still, until tears pricked at my eyes and an involuntary laugh came from inside me, and pure bliss took over me in a way I thought would never happen for me again—lit up my very soul from the inside out. My veins coursed with sweet relief and excitement, flushing my face, heart pounding. It made me feel more alive than I’d felt in ages. Just as the girls and the boys had, I was coming back to life.

I’d done it.

We’d done it.

All by myself, though the red devil was long gone by now, and all of the kids were still unconscious, I shouted and jumped up and down and laughed in celebration.

It was over. It was all over.

I was filled with so much joy, in fact, that momentarily I was tempted to open a bottle of champagne—but immediately I decided not to. My girls were coming back to me. They were all coming back. They needed me again. I couldn’t tend to them under the influence of alcohol. So I didn’t.

After I had come down from my natural celebratory high, I left to go fetch my mattress and blanket. I dragged them into the lab and set them on the floor in front of all six of the tubs. Finally, exhausted again, I lay on the mattress and got under the blanket, facing the tubs.

I would need plenty of sleep for tomorrow, I thought. There were lots of calls I would have to make—maybe even have an interview or two to do, over the phone or otherwise. With only the straight truth this time, instead of half-truths.

The public deserved to know what happened to them, to know what they went through. And now they would.

Perhaps I would sleep well tonight for the first time in what felt like decades.

And as my eyelids drifted closed, I listened to that blessed beeping as it synchronized with my buoyant heartbeat, lulling me to sleep.

 

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

_Ba-bump._

_Ba-bump._

_Ba-bump._


	21. Rebirth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Fixed the Yoda quote flub. Embarrassing. BAH.

**Chapter Twenty**

_"_ _There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." – Albert Einstein_

**-Blossom's POV-**

Brightness. Searing light.

That was the first thing I saw when I awoke two weeks after my 20th birthday.

At first, I didn't know I had missed my birthday, of course. I didn't even recall being unconscious, or what had happened to make me that way. I couldn't remember what I was doing on a hospital bed, or even what my name was.

But when I awoke, lights and sounds overcame me. Sounds from every direction, from close up and far, far away, flooded into my ears. But first and foremost, I noticed that a man with salt and pepper short hair and a lab coat with _Utonium_ stitched over the front pocket was sitting next to my bedside, holding pink flowers. I stared at the flowers that he was holding, then stared up at his face, wondering why it seemed so familiar to me if I had never met him.

As soon as he saw that I was staring at him, he smiled down at me, kindness in the lines around his eyes. He spoke to me as softly as he had looked at me. "Well, hello there. You're just on schedule. Welcome back to the world. We've all missed you dearly."

"Who are you?" I asked him. Despite being asleep for what had felt like a long time—I had a feeling it had been more than just a night or even two, possibly for multiple nights, or even longer than that—my tone was clear. My voice was unfamiliar and loud in my own ears, and it startled me.

"I'm your creator and father," the man told me in a calm, reassuring voice. "You can call me Professor Utonium. And your name is Blossom. Happy new Birthday."

And with those words, what I would come to know as my 2nd life had begun.

Knowing nothing about this Professor, aside from his claim as my creator, I could only trust him and follow what he said. He didn't seem to be lying to me, however. Something about the open honesty on his face made whatever he said seem believable.

For several minutes, he entertained my numerous rapid-fire questions such as: "Where am I?" "Why am I in a hospital bed?" "What day is it?" "What month is it?"

I was in the hospital ward of his basement laboratory, which was in his house—our house. I lived here too. This hospital ward had become my new home. I had been asleep for a long time, and before that, I had been very sick. It was a Tuesday, the first Tuesday of May.

After he had answered my questions, and before I could think of my next round of questions, a loud noise came from outside of the room. It commanded my attention immediately, lighting up every one of my nerves at once. My heart raced—it had been pounding fast before, but now it had sped up to the speed of light.

"Wait! Be careful," he said as I jolted upwards in my bed, making to get out of the bed. He reached toward me, touching one of my hands with both of his. Through his hands, deep inside of his skin, I could feel the blood coursing through his veins, the rhythm of his pulse. So much slower than mine. He cautioned me, "You shouldn't get up just yet—at least not that quickly. Your sisters had some trouble standing and walking at first, just as they've also been having problems recalling a very large portion of their memory. Just as you seem to be. As I said, you've all been asleep for a very long time."

"Sisters?" I echoed him. "I have sisters?" I turned my gaze toward the direction the noise had come from. "Was that noise them?" Before he could answer me, I leaned in the direction I was gazing in. I could hear more noises from somewhere nearby. Breathing. Pacing footsteps. And voices, two of them. Couldn't he hear them talking?

Professor smiled at me. "I left them to their own devices while I came in here to watch you, so it probably was them. They might be starting to wonder where I went." He chuckled. "And yes, you do have sisters. You have a blonde haired, blue-eyed sister named Bubbles, and you have a green-eyed brunette sister named Buttercup."

Something in my mind tugged. The names were immediately familiar, like I had been hearing them for a thousand years already. They certainly felt important, too. Very important. "Okay," I said, accepting this information. Then I asked next, "Who's the oldest out of the three of us?"

Professor Utonium paused. "Well, none of you, really. You're triplets—though not identical ones. All three of you were born at the same time. But the other two have always considered you their leader."

My forehead wrinkled at his use of that word. 'Leader'. It was peculiar. I asked, "Leader of what?"

My creator sighed, slowly sitting down on my bed next to my legs. "I know this all sounds very confusing now. Like I said before, just like your sisters, your memory has taken a big hit. For all of you, it seems like psychogenic amnesia. Part of me had expected that you might be experiencing side effects such as this, considering…well. Your circumstances. And I don't want to overwhelm you right now."

My stomach had sunk at his words. Amnesia. That certainly explained why I couldn't remember anything about my life, or even who I was, or _what_ I was. All I knew was that I had been unconscious, and then I woke up.

Seeing my perturbed expression, Professor offered me a smile. It immediately comforted me. "Not to worry, dear. I'll administer brain scans to all of you, so that we can figure out the best course of action. But right now, I'm going to introduce you to your sisters—they both woke up earlier today. And then once you're all introduced, I'm going to explain everything to you about what happened. I promise."

I drew in a long breath. I had a feeling that this was going to be overwhelming. But I looked at my creator's kind face—was it correct to consider him my father? —and this strong recognition stirred inside of me. I couldn't remember any specific moments with him, but I knew, with a strong conviction, that he had always been there with me. And immediately I knew that I could trust him. Maybe even with my life.

He came over to me, and with his full support, I slowly began to climb out of my hospital bed. I stared down at my own legs like they belonged to someone else. On buckling, stiff, unfamiliar legs, I stood—Professor watched me as I stood, one arm wrapped tightly around my torso, and his other hand grasping my hand closest to him. His eyes were cautious.

And with the look of amazement and palpable relief on his face as he watched me begin to walk with him, step by slow step, as if my walking were a miracle unfolding before his eyes, I couldn't shake the feeling that something unspeakably horrible had happened to me before.

As we moved past a curtain surrounding my bed, and then came closer to the door on the far end of the large, empty room, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror on an adjacent wall. And as I looked at myself for what surely felt like the first time, my stride paused. My hair was red, and very long, and…quite disheveled, I couldn't help but notice. It _looked_ like I had slept on it for a very long time. Gross.

But I was stuck on something else. I had the most peculiar eyes—they were _pink_. Their color was piercing, and they were wide as they beheld my image.

"What is it?" Professor asked me, anxiousness in his voice. "Are you all right?"

"Pink eyes," I murmured. Then I turned to him, feeling the disbelief all over my face. I asked, "That's not…normal…is it?"

The worry immediately washed off of Professor Utonium's face. Relief and his kind grin returned to it. "Not by conventional standards, no," he said. Then he reassured me, "But I never intended for you to be normal anyway."

We began our slow pace to the door again. My eyes remained locked on my own reflection until it edged out of the frame of the mirror and I couldn't stare at myself anymore.

#

We journeyed down a dimly lit hallway. Professor eventually paused in front of a white door, and cautiously, he turned the doorknob and pushed it open. We walked into what looked like some sort of office.

I saw them immediately.

They were sitting in two chairs next to a desk, facing the doorway. Wide, unsure blue eyes. Narrowed, guarded green eyes. Both locked directly on me.

Natural colors, but still unnatural looking somehow. I recognized those eyes. Those eyes seemed to recognize my eyes, too. Three pairs of strange eyes.

These girls, my sisters, were staring at me just as I had stared at myself in the mirror. There was the slight alarm on their faces, and then wonderment. They could feel that I was _different_ , that we were all different, just as I had felt like a very different being from Professor from the second that I'd awoken. My body—our bodies—buzzed with a frequency that felt altogether alien to the frequency of his. Even our heartbeats were different from Professor's.

I could hear the sound of everyone's heartbeats, though it felt weird even thinking that. But I _could_ somehow. I could hear all of them.

The two girls who stood staring at me had the same heartbeat as mine—racing, speeding compared to the slow, steady thudding of Professor's pulse. And I knew they could hear mine, too. I sensed it.

"So you're Blossom, then." The one with distrustful eyes, Buttercup, spoke to me first. Aside from her eyes, which burned with the promise of sheer force and chaos like two pools of nuclear chemicals, her hair also stood out to me—black and almost nonexistent. Her hairstyle was nothing but a buzzcut, like dark peach fuzz all over her head. Oddly, it didn't look out of place on her—it rather suited her sharp, angular features. She mused as we continued to stare at each other, "Took you long enough to wake up. This guy's been talking about you all day. Says you're our sister."

Something about the dryness of her pleasantly deep voice was immediately recognizable to me. I knew that sound. I knew it very well. I didn't know _how_ I knew it, but I did. Seemingly unable to help it, a small smile spread on my face as I shrugged at her. "I think I am," I said.

Suddenly, breaking from Buttercup's side, the blonde one—Bubbles—suddenly ran at me. Fear spiked through me briefly at this unexpected development, and then defensiveness, but when Bubbles' arms wrapped around me with profound affection and kindness, the fear immediately turned into warmth. I felt as if she had already hugged me that way hundreds, even thousands of times.

At direct contrast with the other one's voice, Bubbles' voice rang out sweetly, like the melodic tinkering of the upper octave keys of a piano. "Oh, Blossom! You _are_ our sister! I just know you are, I can feel it!" Bubbles stared up at me with tearful, expressive eyes. Her hair, which brushed just under her shoulders, was beautiful up close—it gleamed with health, like white gold. She said, "You're very important to me. I know it."

I looked at her, surprised. "I am?"

"You are." Her arms squeezed me hard. "I can't explain why I know that, I just do. And I'm so happy to meet you."

Without knowing why, my eyes began to water seemingly on their own. It was just as she had said—just as I had recognized that Professor was someone I cared deeply about, I immediately felt this way about these girls as well.

Immediately I knew, upon first sight, that I would do anything for them. That I would die for them and not even hesitate. And with Bubbles' hug and her genuine words, I felt it even stronger. So strong that I began to cry.

"I don't remember you right now, but I will soon. That's what Professor Utonium said," Bubbles said. "I can't wait to remember you."

Finally, my arms wrapped around her too, returning her embrace. It probably should have felt like I was hugging a stranger—but it didn't. It felt like I was hugging an old friend, but somehow even better than that. "I'm happy to meet you, too," I said, wiping some tears that had rolled down my cheek. I looked over at Buttercup, who was still eyeing me, but maybe not as distrustfully now. "Both of you," I clarified.

Buttercup blinked at the two of us hugging, seeming to be thinking hard about something for a moment or two as her forehead wrinkled. And then, though it was noticeably stifled and held back, she smiled.

"Oh! Before I forget," Professor said suddenly. He held up a finger. "Give me one moment. Stay right here." He scurried out of the room. The three of us exchanged looks, confused. We heard scrummaging around for a few seconds, and just as I was about to volunteer to investigate what he was up to, we heard his shoes tapping against the tile floors as he came back.

He returned through the door, holding something in his arms. He turned toward us, revealing what he was holding—a large white sheet cake, with one pale blue lit candle on one end, one lit lime green candle on the opposite end, and one lit pale pink candle in the middle. In purple frosting on the cake was written a large '20'. Professor began to sing. " _Happy birthday to you_ ," he sang. " _Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday—_ " he paused for a second, looking as if he was trying to figure something out, then attempted to sing awkwardly, " _to my girls_ ," it didn't quite land. From behind me, I heard Buttercup snort behind her hand. Professor finished the song, nonetheless smiling proudly, " _Happy birthday to you!_ "

Bubbles erupted into applause. "That was beautiful!" She enthused as she clapped. Buttercup shot her a look that I felt distinctly said, 'reel it in'.

"Is it really our birthday?" I asked Professor Utonium. "I mean…our new birthday?"

"Well," Professor sighed, "I suppose technically your new birthday would be the moment your hearts restarted. Which was…a week ago." He paused at the mutual confusion and bewilderment on all three of our faces at what he'd said. Then quickly, he went on, "I'll explain that soon. But anyhow, I thought maybe it would be nice to celebrate your birthdays now anyway, now that you're all awake. Even if it's belated." He held out the cake. "Normally I wouldn't let you start your day eating dessert, however, I think this one very _special_ time, I could make an exception."

Buttercup was staring down at the cake with interest. "Do I like cake?" she asked.

Chuckling, Professor said, "Oh, yes. Very much. You love all kinds of foods. You'll remember that fact soon enough." He nodded down at the cake. "Now, all of you make a wish and blow out your candles! We have much to get started on after this."

In unison, the three of us leaned forward, each blowing out the candles which were the color of our eyes with a single puff of air.

#

Over the next couple of days, among some other important things we had to do, Professor Utonium began to fill us in.

He started with the most important need-to-knows. I tried my best to keep up as he filled us in within sporadic moments of explanation—he did it this way so that we wouldn't get overwhelmed, so we could take in information and ruminate over it, let it settle into our minds and store it where it needed to go.

But even though he did it this way, it was as if I could feel all this new information pouring into my brain and pouring over like liquid spilling over the sides of a cup.

Me and these girls—my sisters—were superhumans with special powers. And all our lives we protected humans from supervillains, natural disasters, and even in some cases, themselves. Alongside our superhero lives, we tried our best to maintain 'normal' lives as well. We went to elementary school, middle school, and high school. We were also going to college—until it happened.

Until we died.

Professor Utonium told us that it happened slowly—we lost our superpowers first. Then we became humanlike—developed allergies, illness, weakness. Then our health began to go, and we became very sick. And then we fell into comas. And then we died.

Death for us was only brief, he said. We were only dead for one hour. He kept us alive as long as he could, and he brought us back as soon as possible.

Professor said we weren't supposed to die—not that way, at least. He said that the chemical we were once made of—Chemical X—deteriorated over time and eventually fell apart. He said the way that he had brought us back to life was his development of a new Chemical. Chemical Y, he called it.

He said that we're made of Chemical Y now, and our new abilities would make themselves apparent to us within the next few days while we ran tests with him in a virtual-reality training simulator in that laboratory of his. He was smart, this Professor. And trustworthy.

Professor also said that before we'd woken up, and after he'd saved our lives, he'd held a press conference all on his own, explaining in detail what had happened to us, why we'd apparently hidden it from the public, and how he'd saved us. He explained how the composition of Chemical Y was similar to Chemical X, but stronger, sturdier, and more powerful. He explained to the public that we were alive again, and would be back in shape to defend the city again soon enough. As soon as we were all recovered, inside and out.

But there was another part to our story which was still a complete mystery to us. Without going into detail, he told us that there were 'others'—other beings just like us that he had also revived with Chemical Y in this very lab.

"Who are the others?" One of us would more or less ask Professor at least once a day.

The question would sometimes vary. Sometimes it would be more like, "Who are these other super humans like us?" Which would always clear the way for the next inevitable question, "Will we get to meet them?"

"I can't tell you who they are yet. And one of these days you'll meet them. But not yet," he would answer every time. "None of you are ready yet. Your memories are full of holes, and meeting would be a very, _very_ bad idea right now. Just be patient. All in due time, girls."

And just as well, he would disappear. For two hours every day, he would leave the house—of course only after instructing us not to leave the house while he was gone. He would never say where he was going, only that it was very important. Though none of us said it, I got the distinct feeling that these 'others' were who he was visiting during these times.

But when he returned, he was staunch, unwilling to answer any of our questions except for ones that could be answered with his same old 'not yet' answer. So finally we began to accept that we would only know about these 'others' once Professor wanted us to.

#

In the meantime, he reintroduced us to little parts of our previous lives. First, that very first day, he'd showed us our bedrooms upstairs.

The rest of the house was less stuffy, and so much more open. And it was very…white. The carpet was white, the furniture was white, the walls were white. Professor lead us up the stairs to the second floor of the house.

"Buttercup, your door is the black and white one. Bubbles, your door has blue hearts on it. Blossom, yours is the solid pink door."

Wary, but silent, the three of us ventured up the stairs and down the hallway to the respective doors he'd directed us to.

I found the pink door, twisted the doorknob, and pushed open the door as I entered, and—

Home.

I couldn't figure out how, or why I felt this way, but I felt it.

I was home.

Dark pink plush carpet, which looked like it had just been freshly vacuumed. A bed, adorned with a fluffy pink comforter and sparkling, fuzzy pillows, along with a knit pink throw blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The bed was pushed up against the wall underneath several floating shelves, which held books—so many books I could hardly count them.

And at the foot of the bed, there was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with more books. Thin, worn paperback novels, thick leather-bound encyclopedias, books of every kind. And under the window across the room, there was a hot pink desk, which had more books stacked on top of it at the two far corners. Books and pink. Books and pink _everywhere._

Framing the window were two satin pink curtains that fell to the length of the floor. There was a closed pink laptop on the desk, looking like it had been untouched for a very long time. There was a light coating of dust over the top of it.

All of it called for me, vibrated my own frequency back to me. Mine. All of it, mine.

I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me, making my way over to my bed. Carefully, I smoothed a hand over the pink comforter. So soft and welcoming. Unbidden, I plopped down onto the bed, my face smushing into one of the fuzziest pillows. It all smelled clean. I bet Professor had cleaned all of it.

I rolled over, clutching one of my pillows to my chest, smiling. I loved this place already.

The sound of footsteps came down the hall towards my door, and then my door swung open. Buttercup walked in without knocking as though she were used to doing that. Come to think of it, it was probably something she had normally done before.

She looked around at my room, folding her arms and grimacing. "So much pink," she said. She pointed at a framed poster on my wall, next to a framed periodic table of elements, which was next to a framed map of the world. "Who's that lady?"

I hadn't known it when I first came into the room, but as I stared at it now, I suddenly remembered. "Marie Curie," I told her. She looked at me blankly. "The first woman to win the Nobel Prize for her works in physics and chemistry," I clarified. And one of my heroes, I remembered.

Finally, she raised her eyebrows and nodded, though she still didn't look terribly interested in that. "Oh," she said. She took another sweeping look around. "I guess your room is _all right_. But you got too many books in here. It's like one giant fire hazard."

Okay, I wouldn't argue that last one. I smiled at her, sitting up and putting down the pillow I was holding. "So I assume you think your room is better than mine?"

Buttercup snorted, as if the answer was obvious. "Duh," she said. Then she broke from the doorframe, grabbing my wrist. "Come on, I'll show you."

I quickly got up from the bed as she began to drag me out of the room, then dragged me down the hallway towards the end—towards her room.

We passed the open black-and-white checkered door and entered. The lighting was dimmer than in my room, and my eyes had to adjust.

The carpet was black. All of the walls, even the ceiling, were painted solid black. And all over the walls were band posters—from classic rock like Rolling Stones and The Doors, to metal and alternative and indie bands that I couldn't remember now and was fairly certain I didn't know before either. On one of the walls, in a clearing of posters, hung a neon light in the shape of a green skull and crossbones, which was a yard across and a yard high.

Her bed was in a corner of the room, much like mine had, and a simple black quilt was folded back on it, revealing lime green sheets. She had only two pillows, and the pillow shams were plain black. Her bed seemed like it had recently been cleaned, too.

In another corner of the room was a modern looking stereo hooked up to giant speakers that I was sure probably shook the entire house when turned all the way up.

"So?" Buttercup said expectantly. "It's wicked, right?"

I looked down at her bedside table, where a silver skull sat next to her bedside lamp, which had a black lightbulb inside, making the green and skull accents in the room glow bright. I shrugged. It wasn't my style, but it was creative, that was for sure. "Not bad," I told her. "I just wish there was more color."

"Black _is_ a color."

Actually, I wanted to argue, black was technically the absence of light. Color was what the retinas registered when light waves hit it. Before I had a chance to say any of that aloud, however, Bubbles walked into the room behind us and gasped.

We turned, looking at her. She was aghast.

Buttercup grinned. "You like?"

Bubbles seemed like she didn't know how to answer at first. Then she asked, the question not sounding criticizing, but genuine, "Why are there so many skeletons?"

Shrugging, Buttercup responded, "I like them."

Seeming to recover from her mild horror, Bubbles said, "I think my room is the best."

The both of us followed her as she lead us to her bedroom, and we walked inside.

Sky blue walls with clouds painted on them, lantern string lights strung across the ceiling. A bed almost as cushy as mine, with a poofy white comforter with blue roses all over it, large pillows with a cartoon cat printed on them, and large plush stuffed animals that rested on top of the pillows.

There were bookshelves stuffed with more plushes, along with stacks of magazines, Japanese comic books, and movies. She had a desk too, which belatedly made me realize that Buttercup had no desk in hers. But Bubbles' desk seemed to double as a vanity. There was a computer sitting there, like there had been on mine, but a mirror was on the wall behind it, along with bright lights, and a separate standing mirror that looked like it magnified things by 1000. There was also a giant case sitting next to the mirrors, which I was positive contained endless makeup inside.

"I love your room," I told Bubbles, taking everything in again. I whole heartedly approved of it. "It's so cute!"

Bubbles beamed, and before she could respond, Buttercup asked, "What the heck is this thing?" We turned to find her picking up one of the many stuffed cartoon cat plush dolls, staring down at it in befuddlement. "And why do you have so many of them?"

Bubbles looked at it adoringly. "That's a Hello Kitty. I collect them."

Buttercup continued to stare at it for a few more moments, blinking. Then she dropped it back where she had found it on her bed, brushing her hands on her pants like they were covered with germs.

#

Only shortly after reintroducing us to our bedrooms, Professor began showing us the home videos.

There were so many of them. Professor brought out four giant, clear tubs of them from a storage closet. Probably at least a hundred videos inside each one.

"As you can see," Professor said to us, "I was very dedicated to documenting you girls' childhoods. Vigilant, really. Every birthday, every holiday…heck, every day worth remembering. It's all in these, girls." He made to open one tub, reaching inside and picking up a VHS. "However, I quite wish I had spent the money on converting these to DVDs. Certainly would've been easier to keep in storage than hundreds of tapes. Well, maybe one day." He set it back down, exchanging it for another tape, squinting at the tape labeling on the side, then setting it back inside and picking another one up, reading the side. "I'll leave most of these for you girls to explore amongst yourselves, at your own pace, but there's one I'd like to watch with you right now."

We watched him as he switched from that tub to another one, then after we exchanged a look between all of us, I asked, "Which one are you looking for? Can we help?"

"No, no," Professor insisted, hunched over the plastic storage container, waving a hand back in my direction. "I can find it, I organized by year…I just…need to find…the right…year…" he trailed off, absorbed in looking at another round of labels.

Bubbles was watching him closely, then looked among the boxes in awe. "So many," she said.

Buttercup, not looking quite sure about all of this, remarked, "Is there any way you can just…I don't know, beam all the memories back into our heads? You must have _some_ invention that does that."

Professor chuckled, continuing to search in the third storage box. "No, I'm afraid not," he said in response. "Unfortunately, that's the thing about this particular condition—it can heal. But it's up to you to help restore your long term memories. Watching things like this will help you recall them quicker."

I asked, curious, "What about short term memories?"

Professor's hands stalled for a moment. Then, continuing to move tapes with his hands, he said to me without turning around, "That's harder to say. Short term memories are fragile. And a very select amount of short term memories even become long term memories. The hippocampus is very unpredictable that way. Most things that hold a large amount of significance are more likely to stay in the long term, but there are some seemingly inconsequential memories that become long term, too. However, things from a month and a half ago…well. Again, I'm not sure. But it might be safe to assume that they could be gone forever."

I considered this, nodding. I wasn't sure how I felt about possibly losing some memories forever. But considering what I'd gone through, what all of us had gone through, that maybe wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world to happen. Maybe forgetting wouldn't be so bad.

"Ah hah!" Professor exclaimed suddenly, holding up a tape. "Found it!" He began to stand up straight, then grunted and halted, placing a hand on his back, cringing.

Immediately, the three of us jumped to his aide, three pairs of hands outstretched in panic. "What's wrong?" I asked him.

"Are you okay?" Bubbles asked him at the same time.

"Easy there, geezer," Buttercup said. Bubbles and I shot a glare at her, and she shrugged defensively. One thing I was beginning to remember about Buttercup was that she definitely didn't mince her words.

Professor only laughed. "Don't worry, girls, I'm all right. Just a stiff back, is all. Has been happening a lot these past few months. Your out-of-shape dad's just getting older. And I'm sure all that time in the lab hasn't helped. Perhaps I should get a gym membership," he joked, then he held up the tape in his hand, standing straight gingerly. "Here's what I was looking for. The tape that begins them all."

We backed off a little to let him move over to the living room television, stooping down in front of the old VHS player that he'd hooked up to it. Before he pushed the tape inside, I caught a glimpse at what was written there. ' _The Girls' Birth_ ', it said.

The tape disappeared inside the player. He pressed play, and then the screen lit up as a video began to play through a slight fuzzy static at first.

The focus was shaky, and only bright streaks of light appeared, flying around what looked like a laboratory. The lights were pink, blue, and green. Quietly, I came over to sit in front of the television next to Professor.

A voice from behind the camera was speaking. " _A-Amazing,_ " I recognized Professor's voice in the video immediately. The camera lens tried to follow the paths of the erratic lights, zooming in, zooming out, switching left, turning right. In the background, only tiny little giggles could be heard. " _Incredible. I can't believe what just happened. This experiment…it was only an accident. The Chemical X, I hadn't meant to—would you look at this? I can't believe my eyes._ "

The tape cut ahead. The screen faded on to three little girls with large eyes, sitting down in front of the camera. A little Bubbles, a little Buttercup, and a little _me_.

"It's _us_ ," I breathed out.

" _These are my newborn daughters, Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup,_ " video Professor said, aiming the camera at little us. " _Girls, say hi to the camera!_ "

The three of us didn't seem to understand what he was doing. I, in particular, was staring straight ahead at the camera lens like I wanted to grab it and test it out myself. Bubbles was looking past the camera at Professor's face, beaming and giggling at him like something was funny. Buttercup, on the other hand, frowned at him, frowned at the camera, then frowned at him again, folding her arms. One thing, though, in particular, stood out to me the most.

"We're not babies," I said out loud. I looked over at Professor.

Professor, though his eyes were misty, was nodding. "Yes," he said to me. Then his voice rose slightly so Buttercup and Bubbles could hear. "The day you girls were born, you were already five years old. Fully formed five-year-old brains, five-year-old personality traits, five-year-old appearances. But for all intents and purposes, you were newborns."

I looked back at the screen, shaking my head in disbelief. "We were never babies," I said again, then said, "And we could _fly_." He hadn't been kidding when he'd said we had superpowers. It really was true. I looked over at my sisters, who had come to sit down next to me, staring at the screen in awe. I glanced back at our creator.

Professor smiled. "Yes," he said. Then he said, "You probably can now, too. But we'll need to test that. We'll do that very soon."

I turned to watch as, in the video, we had lifted into the air again and began circling around Professor's head in a supposed game of tag.

We were, indeed, something else. Entirely.

#

The first day in the training simulator, the day we were to test our capabilities, was exactly one week to the day that all three of us had woken up.

First, Professor started with testing our endurance.

The floor of the large training simulator moved at once, like a giant treadmill. It was slow at first. Professor instructed us to run as the speed of the floor increased, and to run as quickly as we could when the floor reached top speeds.

Just as Professor told us to, first we walked. Professor told us through the loudspeaker behind the two-way mirror that he was increasing the speed, and then the floor began to move slightly faster. Now we moved at a power-walk, but it was still incredibly easy.

After another minute, Professor increased the speed again. Now it was a light jog. The hologram outdoor scenery that surrounded us on all sides passed by us quicker, and I began to notice certain holographic trees and birds came and went by in regular loops in the same exact spots.

Professor increased it again. Now all three of us were running. He told us through the loudspeaker that he was going to keep it at that pace for ten minutes, and we said okay.

Ten minutes later, we were still running. None of us were winded in the slightest, none of us had broken a sweat. Professor spoke to us through the loudspeaker again, saying that he was going to turn it up to the highest level now. After our agreement, the floor lurched ahead, practically flying, and all three of us were sprinting now.

Five minutes went by, then ten. The whole time we were sprinting, and not even tired for a moment. I felt as if I could run for hours and not be exhausted, and when I looked over at my sisters, I could tell it was the same for them.

At twenty minutes, Professor finally stopped us, saying the endurance test was complete. Then it was time for the big guns. The fight simulators.

"But Professor, we don't know how to fight," I told him, my face tight with worry.

Bubbles seemed to share my worries. "Yeah, how are we supposed to know what to do? Shouldn't you teach us first?"

Professor only grinned down at us. "Girls, don't be ridiculous. You already know how to fight. It's one of the instincts you were born with. You'll see."

Bubbles and I exchanged another look, unsure. Buttercup, however, didn't seem worried at all. She crackled her knuckles on each hand. "Something tells me I'm gonna like this."

Due to her enthusiasm, Buttercup went first. Bubbles and I observed from behind the protective glass, sitting next to Professor. After announcing to Buttercup that he would stop the simulation if anything got out of hand, and Buttercup nodded, clenching her hands into fists, Professor punched in a combination on the control panel. The lights in the observation room dimmed as the lights in the simulation room brightened.

Another holographic outdoor setting loaded. It looked like the downtown of a city. Holographic sides of shop fronts and skyscrapers appeared on either side of Buttercup, and she stood in the middle of a holographic road. And in the road behind her, a giant crack in the pavement formed, then split open at once. A mighty screech erupted.

Bubbles jumped, reaching for my hand. I took it, squeezing her hand as hard as she squeezed mine.

A holographic creature, one that looked vaguely like a dragon, but also similar to a worm, crawled from the crack, rising up above Buttercup and staring down at her as she turned to look at it. Bubbles squeezed my hand even harder.

The air was tense. The holographic creature was coiled for attack. Then the most amazing thing happened.

Buttercup lifted into the air. She lifted, levitating as naturally as if she were standing up from a chair. I gasped. Bubbles gasped. Professor gasped. The creature roared. Buttercup remained calm—and then a smile appeared on her face as she lunged at the creature.

She flew through the space it had occupied as it slithered out of the way. She dove for its' tail, grabbing it and tossing it where the opposite wall should have been. Instead, it continued traveling, the holographic borders of the room having the illusion of expanding. It crash landed at what seemed to be at least fifteen feet away, roaring in anger.

"Remember Buttercup," Professor announced to her suddenly through the loudspeaker, "The simulations can fight back. Any injuries you sustain in the simulation will be real. Take caution."

She listened to what he said, and then laughed loudly. "Caution smaution!" She retorted. "I can fly!"

Instead of arguing, or getting irritated, Professor simply took his finger off the loud speaker button and shook his head, grinning to himself. "That's my little girl."

Buttercup flew after the creature, and as she approached, the creature opened its' jaws— _fire._ A fireball shot out of its' mouth and soared towards Buttercup. She ducked, and the fireball came sailing towards _us_. The fireball smashed against the thick window, which I was sure had to be military grade glass, or something, because it didn't even melt upon impact. Professor hadn't even flinched, but Bubbles and I had cringed at the loud noise and bright light.

After the fire cleared, and all that was left was the smoke, we could see what was happening again. Buttercup had angrily begun swarming the dragon creature, and it continued hurling fireballs at her.

She dodged them easily at first, and her flying was so quick that it was hard to keep track of her at first. But then she sped up even more, and as I realized what was happening, I latched onto Professor's arm with my hand. "She's not just flying. She's—"

His voice cut me off, sounding as amazed as I did. "She's teleporting!"

Bubbles gasped again, leaning closer to the glass as she stared at her. "No way!"

I squeezed Professor's arm. "Were we able to do that before?"

Professor had picked up a clipboard, scribbling something down on it, shaking his head at me. "No, that's new. That's definitely new."

As we were preoccupied with our amazement, we didn't see that Buttercup was distracted too—she was so distracted by her apparent new ability, laughing jovially, that she didn't notice the dragon creature disappear and reappear. Directly in front of her.

She screamed, and when we looked, it had already happened—the fireball struck her head-on. The fire smashed into her head-to-toe, and she was flung back against the wall that the observation glass was on. Bubbles and I shrieked, and Professor immediately pressed the loudspeaker button. "Buttercup! Are you all right? Are you hurt?" He didn't even wait for her response before announcing, "I'm stopping the simulation!"

From where she had fallen into a heap on the ground, Buttercup raised a hand. "Wait!" she called suddenly. Professor's finger hovered over the giant red 'STOP' button. Buttercup was getting up, looking down at her own hands. She flipped them over, then stared at her arms and looked down at her body. "I'm okay," she called to us, still staring down at herself. "I'm not hurt!"

Relief washed over all three of us. "Thank goodness," Professor said to us, then he pushed the speaker button once again. "Do you want to keep going?"

"I think—" Buttercup cut off, then suddenly looked up in our direction. Two very strange things occurred at once. The first thing was that she shouldn't have been able to see us—the glass was not only military grade, but it was two-way glass. To her, it should've looked like a mirror. But she was looking directly at us. The second strange thing was her eyes. The green of her eyes were normally piercing, but right now, they were _glowing_ _green_. Whites, irises, _everything_ was glowing.

Confirming my thought that she could see us, she smiled at our shocked faces. Then she finished her thought. "I'm gonna try something," she said to us. She turned back to face the creature, which had raised up and was towering above her once again.

She calmly walked closer to it, and the creature's growling increased with each step she took. Finally, it reared back, ready to shoot another fireball down at her as it opened its' jaws again. Buttercup didn't budge.

"Buttercup!" I shouted, though I wasn't sure if she would hear me or not through the steel walls. "Watch out!"

There was no indication that Buttercup heard me however, because she stayed exactly where she was, glaring down the creature. The monstrous thing inhaled, then the next second, a fireball shot from its' throat and flung directly into Buttercup.

My first instinct was to grimace and look away, though she hadn't gotten hurt from the hit last time—and then before I looked away, I stopped, staring. "You guys," I said quietly to Bubbles and Professor, who had turned their faces away from the sight. "Look."

Buttercup was not only fine, but she had _caught_ the fireball between her hands. And though the flames singed the t-shirt she was wearing, her skin was completely unaffected. She flexed and, squeezing the fireball between both hands, it began to shrink. It shrunk in size, little by little—from two yards in circumference to one yard, then two feet, then the size of a basketball. Then before our very eyes, she squeezed the last bit of it until her hands were clasped together and the fireball was completely gone.

My jaw was dropped. I had frozen in disbelief.

"Where did it go?" Bubbles asked aloud the question all three of us had to be wondering all at the same time.

I had no answer to that, but Professor did. He whispered in amazement, "She seems to have… _absorbed_ it."

Before I even had time to wonder if he was right, Buttercup backed up a few steps from the creature, a mighty tremor running through her body. She was shaking so hard that it took everything in me to stop myself from slamming the 'STOP' button.

Her fists clenched, her spine stiffened, and a tense second ticked by as she took a deep breath, almost seeming to fill her entire body with air.

And then she unleashed it—the fire. Neon, nuclear green fire spewed from her mouth directly at the holographic monster, reaching to fifteen feet in front of her, consuming it. The digital creature shrieked in artificial pain, coiling up into a heap as it burned within Buttercup's flames.

Buttercup stopped her fire breath, then stood there, huffing and puffing as she watched the rest of the holograph burn away with digital ashes, then disappeared. Then the holographic cityscape faded away too, and all that was left were the steel walls once again.

Slowly, Buttercup turned to face all of us—we had all been stunned silent. The green glowing of her eyes slowly faded away, revealing the regular look of her eyes once again. Her green t-shirt was charred in places, and some pieces of it had completely burned off. But she was otherwise unharmed.

She smiled, triumphant.

A mess. A glorious, extraordinary mess.

#

After Bubbles and my sessions passed by that same day, Professor had come to two major conclusions. One, that our original powers had definitely returned. And two, that we had clearly gained new ones.

Our new powers included teleportation and power absorption, as Buttercup had demonstrated, and possibly kinetic absorption as well. Physical duplication, as Bubbles had found out when she had been fighting a holographic giant and split up into ten versions of herself—nine of them to distract the giant as the original Bubbles flew up behind him, yanked his head back and body slammed into his jugular. And vortex breath, which I discovered when I used my ice breath and then inhaled as I used it, creating a small, icy tornado.

More new ones we discovered in the next day was night vision and a _slight_ x-ray ability, but only if we concentrated and squinted hard enough. It was incredibly taxing though, one of the few things that was even able to wear us out, so we only attempted it about 30 seconds at a time.

One more new ability, which we had learned of the third day when we did a simulation together—Professor called it 'enhancement'.

When we fought together, and we touched hands, we could _enhance_ each other's strength, or even borrow one another's powers for a limited amount of time. If Buttercup wanted my ice breath, we touched our palms together, she absorbed a tiny amount of my ability, and then could use it once. It was almost like…renting each other's powers. It was _awesome_.

"One thing is for certain," Professor said to us after our enthralling third day of training. "You three will be able to battle like you've never battled before."

The three of us traded looks, not being able to help our palpable anticipation and excitement. There was still much training we had to do to get used to these new powers, but it was truly only the beginning.

#

Every day, before going to sleep at night, I watched 5 home videos by myself in the dark living room. Consumed more and more of our childhoods, letting the grainy VHS footage fill in memory blanks I didn't even know that I had. Reminded myself of the littlest parts of my life that had slipped through the cracks and disappeared.

Meanwhile, other things came back through, coming back at me like little bursts of lightning.

They weren't memories, particularly. They were more like…snapshots. Shots of moments that had happened, only I couldn't place when and where and how it had happened.

A shot of a deep, intense pain in my head—not actual pain, but phantom pain, along with the snapshot of my vision blurry from between my hands. Then it was gone.

Another day, I was showering, another shot—me in the shower just like this, screaming in pain. Again, not real pain. Remembered pain. My heart raced as if it were happening in real time, as if I were afraid. But there was no tangible reason for me to feel afraid. And as I tried to recall when that snapshot of a memory had happened, and why, it was gone like mist.

These came to me throughout the day. They weren't always scary, and they didn't always make my heart race in unexplainable panic. Some were shots of me flying through the air, or lifting something heavy over my head and shoulders. One was of a sad teenage boy with grey eyes and glasses, though I couldn't remember his name.

One more, me standing in the middle of a dry front lawn, barefoot and wearing a pretty dress. Another, me crying in what looked like a school's nurses' office. Another of me, walking through a sea of camera wielding reporters, which had probably happened to me a million times. It certainly felt as if it had.

So many snapshots. I couldn't make sense of any of them.

#

That Saturday, all four of us were outside. Quiet. Sitting on some lawn chairs on the porch in the backyard. For the first time in what felt like a very long time.

There were some very large potted plants on the porch with us, large than I thought was usual for potted plants. A few of them were so tall that they almost looked like trees. They were pretty, though. When I had asked Professor about them when we had first come out here, he'd only said that they were the product of an earlier experiment when he had been developing Chemical Y.

It was very warm out. I heard many birds flying overhead, and the sound of the airplanes that passed over us seemed to roar in my ears. The sound was unnerving to me for some reason. The sunlight on my skin was strange. Not unwelcome—nice, actually. Warm and inviting. But very strange.

I stared down at my hand in the sun, flipping my palm over so that I was staring at the back of it. When I looked closer, I could see the veins and tendons underneath my skin, veins pulsing with life. Squinting further, I saw each delicate bone that made up the inside of my hand. My x-ray vision was strengthening by the day.

Professor had been studying us silently. I hadn't been the only one taking in our outdoor environment like it was some kind of alien planet. Finally, softly, he said to us, "It's all right." The three of us looked at him, then we glanced at each other in chagrin, maybe somewhat embarrassed by our own alienated reactions. It wasn't as if this was some giant leap, coming outside. So why did it feel that way?

As if he had read my mind, Professor went on, "It's been a long time since you girls were last outdoors, and with your powers restored to boot. It's normal to feel a little out of your element out here, considering your circumstances," he reassured us. "I encourage all of you to come out here on your own, maybe go for walks at first, and then some errands with me. Baby steps. Soon it'll feel normal to be out and about again."

Wordlessly, I nodded. I was sure he was right. He was right about a lot of things, and his suggestions seemed reasonable. I glanced over at my sisters, weighing their expressions. They didn't seem to disagree with his suggestions either.

Professor continued, "I want you three to realize that, through this whole trial, I broke a lot of your trust and faith in me. Even before you…fell asleep." He cleared his throat as if holding back emotion. I wondered how much he had struggled through this whole trial. He must have suffered greatly, though he tried to hide it from us. Professor went on, "and I'm willing to do whatever it takes, for however long it may take, to repair your trust in me again." He looked as all openly, and he grinned a little as he asked us, "What about some counseling? Would you girls be willing to try that?"

Buttercup snorted. "I'm not sure they have counselors for things like us," she remarked.

I sighed. Bubbles frowned at her. "Don't say that," she said. "I'm sure there's plenty of counselors willing to work with superheroes."

Wry, Buttercup said under her breath, "That's not what I meant."

I quickly changed the subject back before things could escalate into an argument. "I would be willing," I said to Professor. "I think it would be great idea for all of us to go. Together. Like family counseling."

Bubbles clapped her hands together agreeably, grinning, and Professor said, "That's a wonderful idea, Blossom. I'll begin looking for a family counselor as soon as possible."

I heard Buttercup clear her throat in discomfort, and as Bubbles went on to ask Professor questions about what counseling would be like, I was the only one that noticed Buttercup stand up, turn away, and walk back into the house without another word.

#

"Don't you think it's… _strange_ to call him father?"

Buttercup and I had walked to the neighborhood park that early Sunday morning with thankfully relative peace, with no reporters hounding us and barely any gawking bystanders. When I had knocked on her door after getting dressed, I had fully expected her to either ignore me and continue her loud-snoring slumber or open the door and immediately close it upon my asking her to take a walk with me. To my surprise, though, she had come along without question—she'd only tugged on some sweatpants and a hoodie over her pajama top, yanking an emerald green beanie over her peach fuzz so her head wouldn't get cold.

I wasn't sure I would remember the way, but as soon as we began walking down the sidewalk, I remembered the way to my favorite park as if remembering the words to my favorite song as I listened to it. The sidewalks were empty and calm, and soon the same feeling I'd gotten the day before, the alienated feeling, went away.

After arriving there, the two of us had been sitting on this bench in silence, absorbing the cool morning breeze and appreciating the gentle sunlight. Though there were others there, like some kids playing on the playground and a handful of moms, who were sitting at some picnic tables some ways away, it was still relatively peaceful. And then she'd broken the silence, saying that.

I turned to her. "Who?" I asked. "Professor?"

"Yeah," she said, slightly frowning as she looked out in front of us. "I couldn't remember why I felt weird about that, but then I remembered…before we… _you know_. I remembered that I started to think it was weird back then. Calling him father."

I frowned too. "Why would it be weird?"

"Well 'cause he's…" she hesitated, "He's human. And we're not."

"So?" I countered calmly.

"So he couldn't be our father," she insisted, not in an argumentative tone, but still stubborn. "He could never be our father. We don't share the same blood. We're not even the same species as him."

I said to her, "So what?"

"So what?" she echoed, looking at me, her brow furrowed further. "So everything. That's what parents _are_ right? Older people that gave birth to you. That look like you." Buttercup hunkered further into her hoodie, burying her hands deep inside the pockets and turning her face away from me as she said, "We don't look like him at all."

Sighing, and carefully considering what she'd said, I turned my whole body toward her on the bench, explaining, "Let me put it this way. There are plenty of humans that have adoptive parents. The adoptive parents often don't share the same genes, the same DNA. But they sign official papers, and they're brought into a welcome, loving home. And those people _become_ their parents. Being related isn't everything, Buttercup."

She shook her head as I went on, and then when I was finished, she said, "I still don't understand. How can they just…decide? How can they decide who their family is like that?"

I carefully considered my words again. "Blood…DNA. It's not always reliable. Being born related to someone doesn't guarantee that they'll love you unconditionally. It doesn't guarantee that they'll take care of you the way you deserve to be taken care of." I went on, my voice soft, "The people that _do_ take care of you and love you…I think _that's_ what family is. No matter if you share blood or not."

Buttercup was silent for a long while. Finally, she spoke up again. "So that's what makes Professor our father?"

I turned to her, smiling. "Yes. Exactly."

"I never thought about it that way before. I think…I think you're right." She paused, then she rolled her eyes, a small grin lifting the corners of her lips. "So _that's_ why you're the smart one, huh?"

"We're _all_ smart," I said, side-stepping the compliment modestly.

She sniffed, shaking her head, but still grinning. "Bet you got perfect grades in school," she remarked.

I hesitated, not wanting to admit that I'd found my high school transcript last week and she was absolutely right. Finally, I shrugged, "Grades aren't everything," I tried.

"They are to you," she countered. She squinted at me, playful. "I got you figured out, Red."

I exhaled, surrendering, "Fine. You got me."

Smug, Buttercup lifted her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms. "Uh-huh. That's what I thought."

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, it was calm. And I felt as if I had sat like this with her maybe hundreds of times. Professor had told us that the two of us were roommates at Warner University, our college. The more time I spent with her, reacquainting myself with her, the more I realized why.

"Hey," Buttercup said suddenly again.

I turned away from the direction I had been gazing in after I'd heard a distant car playing a song that I liked. "Yeah?" I said to her, glancing at her.

Her face had grown serious. "I need to talk to you about something," she said to me.

I gave her a small, reassuring smile. "You have my full attention."

"So…" she started, trailing off. She seemed uncomfortable, and I felt as if I already knew what she was going to say. She went on, "Do you remember…anything?" She elaborated before I could reply, "And I don't mean like…normal memories. I've been remembering those, too. But…other stuff. Like…when we were sick."

Having been prepared, the words didn't impact me like I thought they would. But regardless, some of those snapshots that had come to me over the past week or so played through again. "Yeah," I told her. "I'm starting to remember some of that stuff, too." Though I hadn't wanted to admit that to anyone. Not even myself. The memories were so horrifying that I wished that they were just nightmares.

Relieved, Buttercup leaned closer to me, staring imploringly. "I remember…losing my sight. And Bubbles couldn't hear. And our hair was falling out. And worse. Like, horror movie kind of shit. Only that stuff was actually happening to us in real life. That black stuff leaking out of us…do you remember that?"

This time I was affected. I swallowed hard. "I don't exactly remember that," I said quietly.

"Well," Buttercup said, nodding bitterly, "you will soon. So get ready."

Some old, slightly familiar dread pounded into the pit of my stomach. I said nothing.

"So what if this happens again?" Buttercup asked, staring down at her hands. "What if this isn't permanent, just like last time, you know? Living. How can we know if we'll stay alive for real this time? Like really know for _sure?_ "

"We can't know," I said to her, voice grim. "No one can know that."

"But how can we live that way?" She looked away from her hands, staring up at me. "How could we just live our day to day lives, go through all the motions, knowing that this happened? That one day it might happen again, and we'll have no control over it?"

I stopped, thinking for a long time. From the way that she asked me these things, it sounded like it had been building up inside of her for quite a while. Then I said, very honestly, "I don't know."

Buttercup stared at me. Then she looked across the park, where the kids on the jungle gym were playing some sort of hot lava, post-apocalyptic game. Finally, she spoke. "I can't live like that. I can't live every day knowing that it could all end at any second."

I reached across the park bench, grasping her hand in mine. My sister fell silent. When I glanced over in her direction, I saw her head turn away as her shoulders shook. Then I responded, "I know you feel like you can't. I imagine that humans feel this way, too, at some point in their lives. Every single one." I turned my gaze to the two little girls swinging on the swing set, giggling and swinging their legs with abandon, as if pumping their legs hard enough would make them lift high enough to send them over the moon.

Softly, almost as if just to myself this time, I continued, "I had once thought that humans were weak. But they live with courage, without superpowers. I was wrong." I grasped Buttercup's hand tighter. "Their lives change so easily. They're so fragile. But they have the courage to keep moving when nothing seems like it will be okay again. We got to see what true suffering was like—the way that they suffer." I paused as one of the girls flew off of the swing and fell forward, catching herself on the playground rocks on her hands. For a few moments she hissed through her teeth in pain, drawing back her hands to look at the scrapes that had surely formed on her palms. Her friend came running over to her, offering her a hand, asking if she was okay. The little girl smiled, accepting her hand, and standing back up again.

I hadn't realized it, but I had begun to tear up as I fondly watched this pair. Speaking to Buttercup again, I said softly, a sad smile spreading on my face, "They're strong. They thrive. They persevere. They have the ability to survive the small, and the impossible. They live with heads held high, without apology. We may be the ones that protect them, Buttercup. But they're just as strong as we are. Maybe even stronger. And if we followed their example, there's nothing that we couldn't do."

The two girls, laughing and smiling once again, took off towards the monkey bars as their clasped hands swung in between them.

"I can't be like them," she whispered once more. I turned to look at her again, and she had followed my gaze—she was staring at the two little girls, too. She'd seen what I'd seen. "I can't."

"You must," I told her. I tightened my grip on her hand even more, and this time, she squeezed back. Her eyes locked on mine, soft instead of nuclear, glistening and afraid and vulnerable. " _We_ must," I said. "And we will."

She continued looking at me for a long time, absorbing what I'd said. Then, without warning, without even breaking into a smile, she said, "You sound like that green dude from Star Wars."

Pleasantly surprised at the unexpected memory resurgence, I immediately recognized what she meant. "You mean Yoda?" I asked, unable to stop the smile that came to my face.

She shrugged, breaking our gaze, sheepish. "Yeah, I guess. Whatever." At my continued staring at her, in half disbelief and half amusement, she clarified defensively, "I just…liked to watch those movies sometimes. I found them hidden away in my room. They're…kinda cool."

I tilted my head at her. I was stupefied. How had I not known this before? I shook my head. "A closet Star Wars fan. Buttercup Utonium, I would've never guessed."

Groaning, Buttercup rolled her eyes, turning to hide her face from me as she grinned in chagrin. "Don't tell Bubbles," she said. "I'll never hear the end of it."

Bursting out into laughter, I had to let go of her hand to cover my face. Buttercup faced away from me, folding her arms and looking even more annoyed, which made me laugh even harder. Some of the ladies sitting at the picnic table some distance away from us looked over at us in annoyance. Eventually my laughter started to fade, and Buttercup faced me again, looking gravely serious. I sobered immediately.

Seeing that I had become serious again, she asked me very quietly, "Do you really think we can start over? After everything we've been through?"

I thought for a few moments. Then, finally, I said, "I think that we should at least try."

Some other kids ran past us, loud and carefree. I watched them, too. Before, the noise, at such an early time in the morning, probably would have annoyed me. But now I didn't mind it. I liked seeing them happy.

"Okay," Buttercup said after they were gone. "I will. I'll…try."

Unable to help it, I slyly said, "'Do or do not...'" I trailed off, raising my eyebrows and willing her to finish it.

After a long moment of leveling a deadpan stare at me, despite trying her best not to crack, in the end she closed her eyes, shook her head, and finished on a sigh, "'There is no try.'" Immediately afterwards, she said, looking at me dryly, "I shouldn't have told you that Star Wars thing."

Ignoring her last statement, I said in a somber tone, "Let's _do_ this life thing together, then. Day by day."

Softly, Buttercup smiled a careful, tiny smile. "Okay." No arguments, no ifs, ands or buts.

I reached across for her hand again, taking it.

After we sat there for fifteen minutes or so more, we left the park, deciding to stop by the neighborhood café for coffee on the way home, making sure to bring home an extra iced mocha for Bubbles.

From that morning on, I saw just a little less hidden fear and cageyness in her body language each day.

#

Days later, as Bubbles and I were sitting together on the couch in the living room. We had gone through at least 10 VHS tapes together, watching footage of 9th and 10th birthday parties, as well as some Halloween costume footage and some Christmas mornings.

Afterwards, we decided to take a break from home movies and were flipping through TV channels. Then, as Bubbles' thumb paused on the channel up arrow, a very familiar image was onscreen. It was a picture of me, Bubbles and Buttercup taken when we were in elementary school. The both of us gasped at the same time.

"Is that…" Bubbles started, pointing at it. "That's—"

I leaned toward the TV. "What are they saying?"

Without saying anything more, Bubbles turned up the volume.

" _So how exactly did the Powerpuff Girls fall so far? No one could have predicted that the discovery of the fading of Chemical X would lead to their demise. In this hour-long E! special, we chronicle their tumultuous young lives, and ponder what might be in store for the recently revived superheroes. Coming up next: the ways that puberty changed both their appearances and their personal lives."_

As the commercial break started, Bubbles slammed the 'mute' button on the remote control, a look of disgust on her face.

"Unbelievable," I said, still staring at the screen in disbelief. "How can they just put our entire lives on display like that? What gives them the right?"

"I feel violated," Bubbles muttered, tucking some hair behind her ear.

"Me too." I lifted my feet, bringing my knees up to wrap my arms around them. The commercial break ended, and suddenly all three of our 6th grade class pictures appeared onscreen. There was my misguided overalls, body glitter and stick-on earrings phase, on display for the entire world to see. I groaned loudly. "I can't watch this. Let's watch some other channel."

Turning the volume on, Bubbles flipped the channel a couple more times. We passed by an infomercial about a kitchen appliance that could cook bacon into all of one's favorite breakfast foods, and then we passed by a talk show host appearing to be talking to a man who was deathly afraid of blue M&Ms.

Suddenly, Buttercup strolled into the room. "Hey, what are we watching?" She glanced over at the TV screen.

"Not watching and reliving our worst middle school fashion decisions, that's for sure," I told her.

At Buttercup's look of confusion, Bubbles explained with a laugh, "E! News made a documentary about our life, complete with old school pictures and everything."

Buttercup cringed in disbelief. "Oh God."

Bubbles had paused on a 24hr news channel, and what came from the TV's speakers next commanded all of our attention at once.

" _In breaking news, Townsville billionaire Mr. Morbucks has passed away. He had a fatal heart attack and was brought to Townsville Memorial Hospital before passing on. In perhaps the most surprising news, his daughter, Princess Morbucks, well known heiress to his vast fortune, has been revealed to be receiving none of his fortune at all._ "

"Whoa, what?" Buttercup said, coming quickly over to the couch and wedging herself in-between us. "Turn it up!"

" _The young heiress has had a questionable, controversial past, including several attempts as a child to destroy the Powerpuff girls. She's been notorious over the years for causing chaos and trouble in Townsville, and immediately following, having her father cover up her deplorable actions in the media. Many are wondering if the senior Morbucks had decided he'd simply had enough of her antics._ "

"I remember her." Buttercup was squinting at the television screen as Princess Morbucks' image was plastered all over it. She added thoughtfully, "I think I hated her guts."

"Whoa, I can't believe she's not an heiress anymore." Bubbles said, shaking her head. "Crazy."

Buttercup replied, "Yeah, well, someone can't get away with being terrible forever. It was bound to catch up with her eventually."

I folded my arms, eyebrows raising. I'd had enough childhood memories of her that had returned that made me agree with Buttercup's sentiment. "Agreed," I said. "Frankly, I don't feel sorry for her at all."

Bubbles, very quietly, said, "It's too bad about her dad, though."

A beat of silence went by. Buttercup and I shot her an incredulous look. I didn't want to say it, so thank goodness Buttercup did. "Her dad was almost just as bad," she said. She gestured at the television. "He enabled her behavior for years."

"But that doesn't mean he was a bad person," Bubbles argued, and I had to admit that she had a point also. She stared ahead at the television sadly. "And now Princess has nobody left in this world that cares about her."

The two of us didn't argue with that. We couldn't. So we said nothing. And quickly the subject was forgotten about.

But we had no way of knowing how much this certain subject matter would escalate in the coming months.

#

I continued watching the VHS tapes every single day. And soon enough, it happened—every morning that I woke up, a new _complete_ long term memory would float its' way to the surface.

Monday morning, as I was between waking and being fully awake, I remembered the time Bubbles and I had forced Buttercup into letting us give her a makeover in the 5th grade. Having gotten our hands on some cheap dollar store lip gloss, eyeshadow and mascara, I pinned her to the floor as Bubbles worked from above her head and shoulders, applying makeup to her face upside down.

"Get off!" Buttercup had shouted, writhing under my grip and wrenching her face away from Bubbles' reach. "Stop it! Get that away from me!"

"Oh, hold still!" Bubbles had argued. "Just hold still!" She'd grabbed her chin with her free hand, forcing Buttercup to face her, but then wrenched her hand away when Buttercup tried to lean up and bite her on the wrist.

I switched so that one of my arms pinned down both her shoulders, and with my free hand I grabbed her jaw, stilling her at an angle that she couldn't bite me in.

" _No!_ " Buttercup wailed through squished cheeks. Bubbles giggled in triumph, leaning down towards Buttercup's grimacing mouth with the bright pink lip gloss wand.

The memory skipped ahead to when we had finished, showing Buttercup her face in a hand held mirror. I remembered personally thinking that Bubbles had gone overboard with the sparkly blue eyeshadow.

Buttercup had been staring at her face in the mirror in abject horror—and then, spotting the mascara tube, she said, "Let me fix it." Before either of us could stop her, she took the mascara wand, smudging black goop all over her eyelids and underneath her eyes. Then she took her fingers and smudged it all around further until giant black blobs surrounded her eyes. Then she smiled proudly at the both of us. "I look like a zombie!" she exclaimed, laughing.

Bubbles and I traded looks, defeated.

Tuesday morning, a very different memory came to me. I was running, running—where was I running? I was running through the hallways of a school, and panic had filled me. I didn't know what I was running from, and even when I had given up on running and began to fly, I still didn't know what I was fleeing from, only that I was terrified. It felt much more like a nightmare than a memory.

But piece by piece, the memory revealed itself to me. I flew by a painted motif in one of the hallways. 'Townsville Middle School', it read.

This was my middle school. But why was I rushing? And why was I so terrified?

Finally reaching what seemed to be my destination, I flew straight into a door, turning the knob and flinging it open, breathless with panic but not exertion. "Mr. Livingston!" I exclaimed to a tall, glasses-wearing man who had looked at me in alarm. "I'm so sorry I'm late! There was a robbery downtown, and my sisters and I had to—"

The man, who I seemed to recall as my 7th grade homeroom teacher as soon as I had spoken his name within the memory, smiled at me. "Blossom, Blossom. No worries. We're all glad that you and your sisters have saved the day once again."

Without warning, the whole class erupted into whoops and cheers and applause.

"Yeah, Blo- _ssom!_ " One of the boys hooted.

"You guys are the best!" One of the girls near the back called out next.

Relief overcame me as my face flushed. Bashfully I smiled at all of my classmates, and as I gripped my books and binder closer to my chest, I asked my teacher, "So I don't get a citation?" I had been terrified of getting a mark on my attendance record, I now realized. My attendance for all 3 of my years of middle school was flawless. And that day, probably one of many, I had been terrified of marring my perfect record because of crime fighting.

Mr. Livingston snorted, waving a hand as if he were waving away the very suggestion of my getting in trouble. "Don't be ridiculous. Now, go sit down so we can continue with our Plate Tectonics unit."

Happily, and eagerly, I made my way to my assigned seat. The next moment, the memory ended, and my eyes opened.

Wednesday, I recalled my very first boy-and-girl pool party in the 6th grade. It had been at Robin's house, a girl that had moved out of state two years later. She had always been a good friend of ours. She was popular, and nice, and she had been Bubbles' best friend for a long time.

Robin's parents had been really lax for it being a boy-girl party, and a good majority of the time, they had left us without supervision. Buttercup hadn't been phased by it one bit, and she played water polo and chicken with the boys without either parties even batting an eye. She had always been comfortable playing with boys at school, even when we were much younger, so since all of those guys were her friends already, it came naturally to her.

Bubbles and I, however, had started to feel the painful effects of puberty. I was more aware of my body than ever, and going bathing suit shopping had been near torturous. Everything had been either too revealing for my comfort, or too grandma-looking to be seen anywhere in it, much less at a party where boys were going to be _shirtless_. Especially since Robin had invited a few guys that I'd had a crush on at least once during that whole school year. How was I supposed to deal with seeing them _half naked?_ Like it was no big deal, or something?

Eventually, I had picked out a neon pink tankini, deciding to stray far away from bikini tops—I couldn't exactly fill those out yet. But the morning of the pool party, I decided last minute on throwing a t-shirt over the top, deciding I would rather be safe than sorry. After arriving, I had seen at least 3 of the boys eyeing my t-shirt over my bathing suit in disappointment. I regarded them with disgust.

As for Bubbles, because of being so nervous about the party for at least a week beforehand, she was paid a visit by the crimson wave early. In the end, she sat next to me on the sun chairs next to the pool in her adorable white and blue striped one piece with a sundress over it, sunglasses on and palpable discomfort on her face. I gave kudos to her for at least wearing her bathing suit anyway. "Not wearing it would've been a total waste," she'd said to me.

The two of us split a double-sticked banana flavored ice pop as we watched our sister beat all the boys in water polo as they checked her out in her sporty tankini. Buttercup, after all, had hit puberty this year too. Actually, it was more that puberty hit her. Like a truck. It was no wonder that she would be the first of us to get a boyfriend the very next year. Not that Mitch Mitchelson was much of a boyfriend anyway, but still.

At the end of the pool party, Buttercup bet two of the boys fifty dollars each that they couldn't dunk us into the pool.

I turned my attention for two seconds and got dunked. My hair was like a heavy, soaking wet cape cemented to my back for the rest of the day. Bubbles, miraculously, levitated above the water before she could fall in, promptly turned right around, and dumped her cup of melted root beer float over the would-be dunker's head. The whole party laughed at him, even Robin. Buttercup earned $50.

After I got up that morning, I shared that memory with my sisters at the breakfast table. We had a good laugh over it.

Thursday, a much earlier memory came to me.

My sisters and I were young, maybe 7 or 8, and the memory cut in mid-battle as we fought a giant robot with someone inside of it. The robot shot lasers and swung massive metal limbs, crashing into buildings at its' attempt at knocking us out of the sky as we swarmed around it.

As Bubbles and I flew around it, up close, distracting, Buttercup flew up from behind its' line of vision, knocking down the chamber where the pilot sat, and the entire robot came crashing down to the ground below.

The three of us chased it to the ground, and then Buttercup ripped off the door at the top of the pilot's chamber. I reached inside, grabbing a pair of hairy hands, and then dragged the person out.

It wasn't a person. It was a chimp. A chimp that could _talk,_ and cursed profusely at all of us. It had a helmet on, and clothes.

Instantly, I recognized him. Mojo Jojo.

As I remembered his name, a flurry of countless memories came at me that involved him. Countless battles, countless times I had seen his angry chimp face peering at me from behind prison bars, gaze sharp and full of contempt and pure hatred.

I sat up in bed, clutching my head at the sudden influx of information. I was frowning. It felt as if I had not seen Mojo in a very long time. Where had he gone?

I ruminated on these many memories for the rest of the day.

Friday, I remembered that my favorite soda was Dr. Pepper. Saturday, I remembered that classical operas always moved me to tears, and that I had several on DVD. I spent that day watching five of them and crying giant, snotty tears at every single one. Sunday, I remembered that my sisters and I had always done fun things for our birthday, and that this year might've been the first year we didn't do anything special—other than waking up from comas, that is. But that hadn't exactly been fun.

Not like spending all day at Townsville's Six Flags, or getting a limo rented for us and all of our friends, or going to a teen club—which, admittedly, I couldn't quite remember no many how many times I tried to return to that memory. No matter how many ways I twisted and examined the things I could remember—giving autographs to two creeps, meeting a cute guy with blue eyes, getting stared at the whole night like we were celebrities—I couldn't remember much else. It felt so important to me to remember, but the more I tried to remember it, the more it faded.

Oh well. It probably wasn't that important anyway. Just my mind playing tricks on me. Professor said that might happen.

The next Monday, I remembered that I'd had a boyfriend—only I couldn't remember for how long, or when. And I couldn't remember who he was, either. Couldn't even remember what he looked like. This was another stubborn memory for me—the more I tried to think of it, the more it snuck back into the back of my subconscious like a spooked cat. Almost as if it didn't want to be found, like it would do anything not to be drawn out and forced into the open space.

But oh well, I told myself. It probably wasn't that important either.

One morning, though, a memory that I hadn't wanted came straight from the shadows of my mind as I had made my way down the upstairs hallway to my room.

In this memory I was crying hysterically, bent over a toilet, and vomiting up pure black into the bowl. It just kept coming and coming and I couldn't force my body to stop.

When I snapped out of the memory, I was slumped over on the floor of the hallway, hyperventilating. Bubbles was by my side, grasping my shoulders and yelling my name. She hadn't been there before. Had I blacked out?

Between my gulping breaths, I asked, "What happened?"

Bubbles' hands gripped me tighter, seemingly relieved that I had spoken to her. "I heard you fall over, and you were lying there hyperventilating, and you wouldn't respond when I said your name. Are you okay?"

I tried to catch my breath, and when I tried to stand, Bubbles stopped me. "No, don't get up. Just sit down. Put your head between your knees. You need to breathe."

I did what she said, sitting on the floor with my head between my knees. It was easier to breathe this way. Minutes passed, and finally my breaths turned from gulping to regular breathing. When I could speak, I said to her, "Sorry."

She had come to sit beside me against the wall, and she wrapped an arm around my shoulders soothingly. "Don't apologize. I'm glad I was here for you." She paused, leaning her head against my head, which wasn't between my knees anymore, but was now buried in the protective nest of my arms in shame. Then she said very softly, "I have them too, if it makes you feel any better."

Slowly, I nodded, keeping my face hidden. "It does." I sighed. "Thanks Bubbles."

She smoothed her hand across my shoulders. "Love you."

I smiled. Finally, I lifted my face up, looking at her. "Love you, too."

We remained sitting in the hallway a little while longer in silence until my heart slowed back to its' normal pace.

#

My days—our days—continued on like this, though thankfully with few panic attacks.

When we weren't in the training simulator, flexing our powers and practicing, or when we weren't watching more home movies, our days were spent remembering and sharing what we had remembered, and cross-referencing some of our returned memories to make sure we'd remembered them right.

These days were mostly calm still, and I appreciated these calm days. When our brains had so much to take in, with so many ghosts of our pasts to decipher, it was nice not to have to deal with other things that were stressful.

I even appreciated how Professor continued protecting us from the media. "They'll see you when you're ready," he would tell us every time he turned away reporters at the door. "And you aren't ready yet."

So one day, after three weeks had passed, when something actually _did_ happen, it was quite surprising.

_Ding dong._

"I'll get it!" I called out seconds after the sounding of the doorbell. No one else was in the living room with me, and everyone seemed occupied, so I figured I might as well answer it.

After looking through the peep hole, carefully making sure that there weren't any reporters out there, I swung the front door open. No one was there.

Except for—oh. There was a chimp sitting down on our front step. That was new.

"Uhhh," I trailed off, looking left, right and around for anyone that might have left it there. There was no one around. I called, "Hello? Is anyone missing a chimp?" This caught the chimp's attention, and it turned around to stare at me. The animal didn't seem threatened, strangely, considering the unfamiliar suburban environment it was in.

The monkey had a ribbon tied loosely around its' neck, like a present, and a card was attached to the ribbon. Upon closer inspection, the card was addressed to Professor.

I bent down carefully next to the monkey, holding my arms out for it. The chimp looked at me for a moment or two, curiously, and then ambled toward my open arms. Gently, I picked him up, and the unwieldy chimp accepted it with a docile wrap of his arms around my shoulders. He was big, but it was nothing my powers couldn't handle. He was certainly not a baby, either—he even had some white furs here or there in his fur throughout. If he were older, it would explain his low temperament.

"Let's see who left you here for Professor," I murmured to him, reaching for the card at his neck. I opened the card, reading the sophisticated-looking calligraphy written inside.

 

> " _To the Scientist:_
> 
> _As a reward for keeping your end of the silence deal, JoJo is your lab chimp again. I can do nothing for him now. He has no place else to go, anyhow, and I couldn't bear taking him to some barbaric zoo. He deserves to live out the rest of his days in a laboratory, the kind of place he enjoyed and always belonged. Take care of the unfortunate dumb bastard. I'll be watching._
> 
> _Signed,_
> 
> _You-Know-Who."_

I stared down at the card. This chimp…Jojo. That was familiar. Maybe too familiar.

Was this chimp Mojo Jojo?

Nonplussed, I looked into its' face, searching for any recognizable traits, squinting. Despite staring right the chimp, I didn't recognize any of the traits as Mojo's. As the chimp stared back at me for a few moments, blinked, and then turned its' head as a passing fly caught its' attention, I decided that it didn't seem to recognize me either.

Cautious, I turned, going back inside of the house as I shut the door behind me. Then, quickly, I made my way to the basement door, opening it as I rushed toward the steps.

I carried the chimp all the way down the steps into the laboratory. As I made it to the bottom, I listened closely for where Professor was located in the large basement. Then, hearing noises coming from the office, I made my way down the hallway.

When I made it to the door of the office, I rapped my knuckles twice against the closed door gently.

"One moment!" Professor called from inside. After some shuffling around, the door opened. He looked at me—then immediately his eyes went to the chimp.

"Someone left this guy for you at the front door," I said to him, adjusting the chimp on my hip slightly so that he wouldn't fall.

"Just now?" Professor asked, eyes wide.

"Just now," I confirmed.

"Oh my!" Professor bent to look the chimp in the face. The chimp looked back at him, retracting his lips back from his gums in a monkey-ish grin. Professor, after looking at the chimpanzee in wonder, asked me in a strangely hesitant manner, "Did…did you see who left it?"

I blinked at him. "No," I said. "Why?"

He sighed, seemingly in relief. "No reason," he said. I couldn't tell if it was the whole memory loss thing, or maybe the PTSD thing, but I couldn't help but feel like he was keeping something from me. He stared down at the chimp fondly, reaching for the card and gently untying it from around his neck. "Look at him. He's just as I remembered him from back then. Before he got exposed to the Chemical X." He opened the card, eyes scanning over the writing inside.

Catching what he'd said and perking up, I asked, "So this really is Mojo Jojo?"

Professor finished reading the message, and he folded the card back up and stuck it into the front pocket of his lab coat. "Yes," he said finally. "It is."

I stared down at the chimp, shocked. I was holding Mojo Jojo. But he didn't recognize me at all. He didn't seem to recognize Professor either. And…he was just an animal. Nothing like the villain I'd known at all. "What happened to him?" I asked, almost breathless.

"The Chemical X faded in him, just like you and your sisters' did. And the others, too." He moved on quickly before I could ask for the millionth time who 'the others' were. "But unlike you girls, who were made solely with the Chemical X and the other ingredients, Mojo was already a carbon based organism, a mammal, when he was exposed to the Chemical. When it faded from his system, he became just an animal again."

I continued staring at the chimp. He looked at our surroundings, completely oblivious of our conversation. Not only that, but he seemed to not even understand it. "Does he remember anything from when he was Mojo?"

Professor sighed. "He doesn't seem to. Which, if I'm being honest, is fortunate for the both of us," he admitted.

I nodded, agreeing. Very carefully, I set the chimp down onto the floor. The both of us watched as the chimp calmly began pacing around the room, curiously eyeing the desk and the shelves of files. I couldn't believe this was my ex nemesis. I couldn't believe someone who was so dangerous, so crazed with power, could be reduced to…this. Finally, and quietly, I said, "…Professor?"

"Yes, dear?" Professor replied.

I thought very carefully of how best to word this question. I didn't want to sound like I was accusing him of something. "If I asked you who left Jojo here for you, would you tell me the truth?"

Professor paused for a long time, absorbing this question. He also, I thought, seemed to be deliberating on how to answer. Finally he said, "It's better for all of our safety that I don't, at least right now. I'm sorry. I know that's frustrating." He offered me a smile. It was reassuring. "But I will tell you one day. One day, you and your sisters will know everything. Just trust me for now when I say that Jojo is harmless, and it's in his best interests that he stays here with us. I'll make him his own room, with his own space to move around in. And taking care of him now is also…a favor." He paused. "For someone. Let's call them a friend."

I looked at him for a moment. Then I nodded, accepting this. I believed him. And I believed that he would only ever withhold information from us if it was for our protection. He was our father, after all. For a couple of minutes, the both of us kept close watch on Jojo as he began to move about the basement. Professor quickly had to intercept him as he began to enter the experiment lab, and he shut the door before he could go in. The chimp continued to move down the hallway on his knuckles, unfazed. We followed him, laughing uneasily.

After a moment of silence, I spoke up again. "Professor?"

"Yes, dear?" He responded.

"Will I ever get to go back to college?" I asked him. I had been wondering this for at least a week now. As I had gone through all the books in my bedroom, and all of the old essays saved on my laptop, I realized that I loved school. And I missed it.

"Of course, honey," Professor said. We continued moving down the hallway after the snooping chimp. "As soon as you've healed."

My stride almost paused. "But I am healed, dad." I frowned. I didn't understand what he was talking about. "My body is the best it's ever been."

Professor smiled, ever patient. "Yes, but…how should I put it, exactly?" He sighed. "There are other ways that you and your sisters are healing right now. Your minds have been through a great deal, and…well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that. The post-traumatic symptoms all of you have been experiencing are proof enough."

I thought of the snapshots—my reactions to such snapshots. Sometimes they scared me enough only to make my heart race and my hands shake. Sometimes they were enough to make me have panic attacks, like the one I experienced in the upstairs hallway only a little while ago. I nodded slowly, understanding. "Oh…I see."

"With time, these things will heal," Professor continued as we stopped—Jojo had stopped, turning right around and walking back toward us, then straight past us. We followed after him as we walked back where we had come. "There's no telling how long that'll be, but…well. It's the same for humans, too. It's the same for me. I have a lot to recover from, too."

I looked up at his face, at the strain that had passed over it as he'd said that. Just like I had thought before. I asked him, "But how will I know when I've healed _that_ way?"

Professor pointed at me with a slight grin, as if to say, 'excellent question'. "It won't be precise, like how physical healing can be. You won't be able to mark your progress by the day, or maybe even by the month. And it's different for everybody. So I can't say how you'll know exactly." He looked down at me. "But one day you'll blink, and you'll realize that you've gone back to living normally, the way you lived before. And it'll come so naturally, so painlessly, that it'll shock you."

His words had moved me. And I wanted more than _anything_ for them to be true. I held his gaze, managing a hopeful grin. "I hope so," I said.

A crashing noise came suddenly. The both of us snapped out of our moment, looking in front of us where Jojo had been—and was no longer.

As soon as I had said, "Crap!" Professor had already rushed ahead to the open office door, looking inside.

He turned to me, panicked. "He's not in here!"

I ran to the basement bathroom. No sign of him. Professor rushed to the room where the training simulator was—nowhere to be found. Another crashing noise came from up the basement steps, and then a shout—the basement door was open.

I flew up the steps, and Professor wasn't far behind me. I came through the doorway and into the kitchen, and there stood Buttercup and Bubbles. Buttercup had dropped a bowl of cereal onto the kitchen floor as she stared in shock ahead at Bubbles, who was holding Jojo in her arms, speaking to him animatedly and enthusiastically. Her ability to talk to animals had come back in its' full glory, and she seemed delighted at Jojo.

Buttercup, however, looked as about as mystified as someone normally would be if they walked into the kitchen to find a chimp there. She turned, looking at us. "When did we get a pet monkey?" she asked, pointing at the animal.

Not sure what to say, I shrugged and looked at Professor.

He only sighed. "Long story."

#

Another three weeks passed.

Adjusting to life with Jojo was strange at first, admittedly. But after Professor had transformed one of the basement storage rooms to Jojo's room, complete with a bed, ropes to swing on, actual monkey bars, and of course a good supply of daily bananas, he had actually become a member of the family much easier than one would think.

He no longer was the villain of his past—Mojo and Jojo were different beings entirely. Mojo had regularly sworn that he would kill us one way or another—had dedicated his entire existence to it. Jojo liked to learn sign language, hang out with Professor in the lab, and go for chaperoned walks around the backyard. He also enjoyed his naps. He was a middle aged chimp after all.

This arrangement was nice for Professor as well—this way, he wasn't so lonely in the laboratory anymore.

And as we adjusted to our new member of the family, we continued remembering more and more of ourselves. We ran errands regularly, spent as much time outdoors as we did indoors now. Reporters did try their best to tail us, but we only did our best to avoid them as Professor advised us too.

It was just as Professor had said—things weren't perfect. They weren't quite normal yet either. But they were starting to feel as if they would be normal again.

And the same day I had quietly noticed this in the back of my mind, it happened.

"I think you're ready now, girls," said Professor to the three of us. "I think it's time for you to be reintroduced to the others."

My sisters and I were sitting at the kitchen table, in the middle of eating a lunch that Bubbles had made for all three of us. We'd frozen up at his words, staring up at him in disbelief. We traded glances, shocked, then looked back up at him.

I was the first to defrost. Then, very calmly, I asked him _the_ question. For the very last time. "Professor, who are the others?"

Professor smiled, pausing before he finally graced us the answer we had craved for a month and a half. "The boys are the others." This statement had resulted in a barrage of questions being unleashed at him all at once, and he only kept silent, holding up a hand. We fell silent. Professor had offered us no more information, only said, "I have two conditions to meeting these boys."

"What are they?" Bubbles asked him.

Professor held up one finger. "The first condition: you must agree to getting into a containment chamber, which I will lock from the outside. For your safety and for theirs."

The three of us looked at each other again, this time warily. That was weird. Why would we need to be contained? What for?

Hesitantly, Buttercup asked, "And the second condition?"

"Keep an open mind. No matter what," he said.

I looked at my sisters. They nodded at me, however unsure they looked. I looked up at Professor. "We'll do it."

#

Inside the containment chamber, it was cramped. In the front of it, there was military-grade glass windows, just like in the training simulator, only these were ceiling to floor and they were transparent on both sides instead of two-way mirrors. Also like the training simulator, the walls were lined in steel. But this felt more like a glorified jail cell.

Professor had already locked us inside. Afterwards, he told us he would be right back. That he was getting the others. The boys.

"I don't know why," Buttercup murmured to us, "But I have a bad feeling about this." She was sitting on the steel floor, leaning her back against the wall.

I was pacing restlessly. Bubbles was biting her nails, standing, and leaning back against the wall.

"I still don't understand why we have to be in here," Bubbles whined. "Doesn't Professor trust us?"

I frowned, thinking. "Maybe it's not that he doesn't trust _us_ ," I said. I turned, walking back the way I had just come seconds ago. "Maybe it's more that he doesn't trust the possible outcome of this meeting."

"But why would he have to be worried at all?" Buttercup countered. "What is it about these guys that has him so worried to begin with?"

She had a point, there. And I didn't admit it, but I was nervous too. I think all of us were.

Suddenly, all three of us heard the basement door at the top of the steps open. I stopped in my tracks. Buttercup jumped up from the floor. Bubbles gasped, then covered her mouth with both hands.

We heard the sound of footsteps down the stairs. Multiple pairs of footsteps.

"On your guard, girls," I whispered. "Be prepared for anything."

The footsteps neared. We heard Professors' voice—then an unfamiliar one. Then another unfamiliar one. The others. The boys. They were coming toward us.

The footsteps stalled outside of the door which lead to the room we were in. Professor said something—it sounded like, "Are you ready?" Three voices answered. A hand on the doorknob. It turned. My sisters and I stood on the other side of the windows, tensed and ready, all three of our hearts pounding in anticipation.

The door opened.

Inside walked three boys. On second thought...they weren't boys. They seemed like men. They were built like men. Tall, taller than all three of us. Strong looking. Maybe about our age. Professor followed them, hanging back at a distance near the door.

There was one with blond hair, one with dark hair that was just starting to grow out of a buzz cut, and lastly, one with long red hair. The three of them slowly approached the glass. On the other side of the military-grade glass, they stared in at us, dubious and leery, just as we were staring at them.

Just like us. Just like me.

I didn't recognize them, but just I had felt with my sisters after meeting them again, I felt it immediately—the likeness. Inhuman, bizarre eyes, deep blue, dark green, and _red_. Heartbeats that weren't like Professor's, that were quick. High body heat. The gazes that held sheer power. Power that resonated from them in waves. Just like ours.

Chemical Y sung in their veins. Just as it sung in ours. Superhumans, just as Professor had said.

All of them were strange, but I couldn't help the feeling that I'd seen them all somewhere. And most of all, I couldn't help but stare at the red-haired one—stare at his eyes. I squinted up into his face through the thick glass. I felt lots of things that I couldn't quite explain.

But one thing I knew for sure, one thing I could pinpoint inside of me immediately, was fear.

None of us had spoken a word since they'd entered the room. It was as if my sisters and I had all but held our breath, cautious of even breathing too loudly. The boys had been silent as well, seemingly as bewildered as we were, though it was difficult to read their faces.

The red haired boy continued to stare down at me, vivid, strange red irises puzzled and unrecognizing.

Then, finally, he was the one to break the unsettled silence between all six of us. "Who are you?"


	22. Future

**Chapter Twenty-One**

_“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, […] I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald_

**-Blossom’s POV-**

Late June.

Summer.

Something so magnificent that I recognized it even without any specific memories returning to me.

The intoxicating, hazy way the balmy air enveloped me, the way it brought with it fresh, vivid colors and breathed exuberance and newfound energy into everything that lived was something that I would know anyway—as if the golden warmth had carved itself into my very soul. Drums crashing, horns blaring, soaring voices; summer was _here_ , and it demanded to be revered.

With its’ arrival, the clock on all of the surrounding life seemed to reset and then _burst_ , thrumming and undulating and igniting into vibrancy —and with it, so did I.

Familiar aromas filled the atmosphere, clipped grass and charcoal and sunscreen and the metallic smell of light rain. Daylight stretched on almost endlessly, reaching into the hours of the early evening, melting into popsicle colored sunsets unto starry, clear nights set to the tune of the cricket’s song.

I had already been living once again for many weeks now. But when summer began, that was when I had begun to feel _truly_ alive. I welcomed summertime back to me like an old friend, beckoning it to wrap me in its’ bewitching embrace and never let me go.

And with summer’s arrival, the process of finding who I was began to seem to come easier to me.

As we showed more positive signs of healing and feeling at home within our home again, and after a couple of weeks of private family counseling, Professor began to give us more leeway. I think seeing us returning to our normal behaviors again was enough to reassure him that we could have more time out of the house without him, and more time to pursue what we liked to do without him having to hover over us and worry.

So in turn, during my summer days, I spent much of my time reading. I read in the kitchen in the mornings as I ate breakfast. Then I would grab my book and sit out in the backyard in one of the lawn chairs, reading for _hours_.

And then I would come back inside for lunch, reading as I ate, and I would return to the backyard lawn chair, playing the indie radio station on my portable mini radio with a cold drink by my side—which often was forgotten for long periods of time, resulting in all of the ice melting and turning my drink watery. I tried a handful of times to revive the cold drinks by using my ice breath on them, but it only resulted in the whole thing getting frozen solid, rendering it completely undrinkable unless I licked it like a giant ice pop.

Sometimes I would even decide to take a break here and there and cat nap outside with the book over my face like a little face tent. But sometimes the heat on the rest of my body would get to be mildly uncomfortable, even though I wore breezy maxi dresses every day.

Thankfully I was invulnerable to sunburn, and the worst I ended up with were weird tan lines. But then I would go inside, get a bowl of ice cream and see what one of the others were doing.

Most days, Bubbles was either sunbathing on the roof or out shopping in small suburban shopping centers, and Buttercup was either binge watching her favorite cable show filled with her three favorite things—violence, gore, and sex—or she was working out, or napping in her dark cave room.  

These days were wonderful. But summer nights— _those_ were my favorite.

My favorite thing to do during warm summer nights was to fly to the top of the house, sitting on top of the roof, and looking out at the stars. Sometimes I would grab Bubbles, too, and we would stargaze together.

“This reminds me of something,” Bubbles would tell me without fail every single time. And every time, I would look over at her, analyze her face. She always looked like she was deep in thought, frowning.

Every time, I would respond, “Have you remembered what it is yet?”

Every time, Bubbles would sigh. A sigh that sounded sad and frustrated. And then she would say, shaking her head, “Not yet.”

And then I would look up at the sky too, and the many, many stars, wondering what it was that stargazing reminded her of. Wondering why I, too, felt like there was something the night sky reminded me of.

#

I stared hard at the boy in the photo. That red-eyed boy I met in the basement that Professor had said was so important to me.

I still regularly thought about that strange moment, meeting those boys. Even though it had been almost four weeks since it happened. I played that meeting over and over in my head, several times a day.

Admittedly, I had become sort of consumed by thinking of it. I couldn’t get over how unsettling it had been.

The weirdest part, though, had been after the boys had been escorted out of the house. Professor had come back, letting us out of the containment chamber, and he had begun asking us questions. Questions like, “Did any of you recognize them?” and, “Have any of you had memories with those faces in them? At all?” And when we’d answered in the negative, he’d looked…dismayed.

After that, when it was our turn to ask questions, the only thing he told us was that they were called the Rowdyruff brothers. And then, looking distressed, he had locked himself in his office the rest of the evening.

The next day, though, he’d brought us the old magazines and tabloids. Stacks and stacks of them bound together with long rubber bands.

Professor said, vaguely, that we would find pictures of these Rowdyruff brothers in them. He said that these brothers were very important to us and very important to remember. He then told my sisters and I that, as a part of our daily memory-refreshing therapy with the VHS tapes, we were to also go through a few of the magazines and tabloids at least once a day—and so once a day, I did.

And every day I sat and looked at photos of this strange red-eyed boy on random pages of these old tabloids and magazines—except for the pages that, oddly enough, had been removed. Professor hadn’t even tried to hide that he had removed a large volume of them—whole chunks of articles and entire pages were neatly cut out. Even parts of some pictures were cut out, some even cut straight down the middle, right in half.

After four weeks of staring down at half-complete pictures of three strange boys that I didn’t remember, along with staring with dissatisfaction and suspicion at the multiple pages that should have been there, I eventually decided I’d had enough. I had spent enough time wondering what it was that Professor had tried to hide from us.

So today, I had decided to go on the Internet and search all three brothers’ names to see what came up.

We had been somewhat barred from the Internet for the past couple months—Professor had claimed that the media still hadn’t let up and that the Internet comments about us were horrifying. He also said that our social media accounts were still a mess, even mentioning that apparently Buttercup’s had been hacked weeks ago. I had taken his word for it, considering I hadn’t even remembered that we _had_ social media accounts.

I didn’t think I was supposed to be Googling things either, but I figured that Professor would get over it eventually. After all, what would I possibly find?

So in the end, I’d typed in ‘Rowdyruff boys’ and hit _Enter_.

Now, 20 minutes after beginning my search, I was still staring open mouthed at the results.

The red eyed one, he seemed to be a bad guy—or maybe he _used_ to be. All the articles about him and his brothers destroying things or robbing things, or whatever else they’d gotten busted for—by my sisters and I, of course—they were all old.

I’d skimmed through as many as I could. The newest ones about them of the villainous nature were from about 4 years ago. They seemed to have turned over a new leaf more recently, though I hadn’t looked into why yet.

The old articles rang some bells for me. I did recall constant fights with some kids who had superpowers just like ours—that was _them_ , I realized. They also, I realized after reading one particular article, had belonged to Him and Mojo Jojo, who of course I remembered, considering one of the two lived as Professor’s laboratory chimp permanently now.

I was a little more informed now. But aside from the pages and pictures Professor ripped out of the magazines about them, there was one more thing I couldn’t quite understand. Why had Professor said they were important to us?

If they were just more run-of-the-mill bad guys with super powers that we protected ordinary people from, why on Earth would that give them any real importance to us whatsoever?

I studied more pictures of them. Pictures of one of them, the one with black hair—Butch?—as he held up a police officer by the collar of his uniform, his own feet levitating several feet off of the ground. Butch had malicious laughter on his face as he looked with amusement at the terrified officer’s fear.

I clicked through to the next picture. This time it was the blond one, Boomer, looking several years younger than he had in other pictures, maybe 13 or 14, flying away from whoever took the picture on a cell phone, pockets overflowing with dollar bills and each hand clenched around a wallet that I seriously doubted were his.

I clicked through to the next few pictures, and they varied—one was a very distant, low-resolution picture of the three of them flying over downtown after another heist, burning streaks of red, dark blue, and dark green following them.

Next were a collection of three of their mugshots, only three of many I guessed, and they looked very young in them—eleven, maybe? The age would explain why they looked like wacky school photos, with mischievous toothy grins and mid-raspberries and pig noses.

The next one I clicked to was an up-close paparazzi shot of the leader of the Rowdyruff Boys himself, the one I had sought to find out more about in the first place—Brick. His red eyes were locked directly onto the camera lens, fiery and angry, and front and center in the picture was his middle finger. His eyes felt like they were staring me down directly. Something deep in my chest shifted. Fear, surely. Or something very like it.

And just as every other time I looked at a picture of him, I felt a tug in my mind. A tug of recognition.

But aside from my very few, very fuzzy memories returning of battling him as a child, I could never figure out where that feeling of strong familiarity came from. Or why, inexplicably, the sight of him made me immediately feel something akin to… intense sorrow. It even felt like loss.

I had gotten that feeling when I had stood behind the glass of the containment chamber and we were face to face as he asked me, with zero recognition, who I was. And I got that feeling every time I saw a new picture of him, every time I noticed the white scar that slashed through his right eyebrow, wondering how he got it.

But _why?_ Why would the sight of some ex-supervillain make me feel sad?

What, besides being supervillains that we were constantly battling and arresting in the past, did these guys have to do with us? What significance could they have had in our lives beyond that? If that was really all he was to me, logically, he meant nothing to me.

I shook my head, trying to snap myself out of these circling thoughts.

Perhaps they were just false memories trying to confuse me. Professor said that could happen once in a while as we remembered things. Maybe my brain was just playing tricks on me again.

Before I knew it, I had scrolled down to the bottom of the search results page. For a moment or two, I thought of closing out of the page. But as I did, my eyes caught on something peculiar.

Under a ‘Related Searches’ column, it was full of phrases such as: ‘ **Blossom powerpuff girls Brick rowdyruff boys** ’, ‘ **Blossom Utonium and Brick Jojo kissing** ’, ‘ **Blossom PPG Brick RRB dating** ’, ‘ **Bubbles Utonium Boomer Jojo going out** ’, ‘ **Buttercup Butch** **dating** ’, ‘ **Powerpuff girls Rowdyruff boys team up** ’, ‘ **Powerpuff Rowdyruff lost battle with monsters** ’, ‘ **Powerpuff girls disappearance** ’, ‘ **PPG RRB relationships** ’.

My eyes locked on all those strange words as my stomach did a somersault. The ‘disappearance’ one I understood. That one was probably from when we were sick. But the rest of them…what on Earth? I wondered if search engines could make up fake searches. Those couldn’t have been real. Could they have?

Aside from my bewilderment, though, I couldn’t help but notice that tugging in my mind again. It had returned, and more insistently this time. Some sort of recognition at these words.

Feeling antsy, and unable to deny my piqued curiosity, reluctantly, I moved the mouse pointer over ‘Blossom Powerpuff Girls Brick Rowdyruff Boys’. That seemed to be the safest and least creepy one out of them all. I took a deep breath, paused for one more moment, then I clicked with a grimace.

The new search results loaded, and as soon as my eyes took in what was on the page, shock struck me in the gut. My eyes widened.

The image results were listed before the web results, so they were the first that I noticed. An image of myself looked back at me—an image of myself with _him_.

I hastily clicked on it, making its’ size grow to full screen so that I could see every detail and make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. There I was, with the charismatic and harrowing leader of the Rowdyruff Boys. The both of us were looking for traffic as we crossed the street, respective red hair tousled by breeze, both of us wearing sunglasses and _holding hands_.

But wait. The picture…it looked somewhat familiar. Where had I seen that background before?

I froze. Realization hitting me, I jumped up from my desk and hurried toward my bedside table where I had left the magazines I’d been looking at earlier. I skimmed through all of them until I found it— _ah hah!_ One of the pictures that had a big hole cut in it. I rushed back to my desk. Open magazine in hand, I held it up to my face, and then to the picture on the computer screen. The Brick in each picture lined up perfectly—the way his head was angled, the shirt he wore, the same expression.

Except in the Internet version of the picture, there wasn’t a gaping hole where I was standing. Like the hole Professor had made to deliberately remove me from the entire picture.

Hands shaking with shock and disbelief, I threw the magazine away from me and onto the floor. I dropped back into my desk chair and stared at the computer screen, frantically clicking through more pictures in the image results.

Pictures of us flying high over the photographers’ head, hands linked, red and pink streaks tailing us. Pictures of us sitting together on the other side of a café window, heads ducked down into books or mid-sip from a mug of coffee. A shot of us from several feet behind on a sidewalk, his arm around my shoulders as he guided me through what looked like a mob of reporters. Some shots of us at night, coming out of different restaurants, where I was wearing heels and pretty evening dresses.

A series of shots of us at a park, some with us sitting on a picnic blanket and enjoying lunch from a basket—and a few of Brick spotting the photographer, glaring at the camera. And then, more shots from seemingly the same day, of us hiding _in_ a tree. We stood on a thick branch in a large tree at the park, partially shrouded by the leaves. Brick seemed to have a finger pressed to his own lips, smiling down at me playfully as he held me against him with his other hand, and I was staring up at him, laughing so hard that my whole face was flushed.

I clicked through more, and there were some more repeats until another unfamiliar one popped up—this one was taken in some parking lot somewhere, at night, and the two of us were locked in an embrace.

And we were _kissing_.

Eyes widened, I touched my lips with the tips of my fingers, staring ahead at the picture. My stomach churned and twisted.

I could barely process what I was seeing with my own two eyes. The familiarity, the recognition, the feeling was still there—but why couldn’t I remember any of this? All of this should’ve been bringing back _some_ memories for me, or at least some semblance of a memory. But all I felt was confusion. It felt like I was looking at two strangers in these pictures.

Clicking onto the next series of pictures, I beheld the two of us at an outdoor ice skating rink that had a 20-foot-tall, festively decorated Christmas tree smack in the middle of it. Dressed in winter clothes, a pink coat and a red coat with scarves and hats and gloves, we gripped each other’s forearms as we balanced on skates—I looked uneasy, looking as if I were losing my balance, and Brick looked as if he were steadying me, his face amused and cheerful with encouragement.

I stared at the smile on his face. His smile was the kind that was transformative. I could barely recognize him as that once evil little boy when he looked such a way—when he looked so happy that he was illuminated from the inside.

Looking at the picture’s caption, I immediately saw the date these pictures were uploaded—December 31st of last year. This was recent.

With empty uncertainty, I clicked through more of the image results, now barely pausing long enough to take them in.

There were hundreds upon hundreds of them.

 _Thousands_.

Finally somewhat snapping back to my senses, on impulse, I clicked the back arrow, going all the way back to the page where I had seen all the strange ‘related searches’, and when I made it back there, I clicked next on ‘ **PPG RRB relationships** ’, without any hesitation this time.

There must have been millions of results now.

Eyes even wider, I took in everything. There weren’t just couple shots of me and Brick this time. I saw multiple pictures of Bubbles with the blond brother, Boomer, and shots of Buttercup with the one called Butch. Countless pictures.

But not just pictures. Articles, too.

‘Are they, aren’t they’ types of articles. Pure news articles about some battle that we’d lost sometime last year. Gossip articles containing more paparazzi pictures, including a picture of a casually-dressed Bubbles walking alongside Boomer with a tall cup of coffee in her hand and large, glamorous sunglasses on her face. There was another article with another picture taken at night of Bubbles, dressed in glitzy evening wear and bashfully turning her face from the camera, Boomer holding her hand and leading her past the photographers protectively with a hardened look on his face. More articles that seemed more like think pieces.

I kept scrolling through the web results. Fan blogs. Fan blogs everywhere, containing blog posts about how cute the Powerpuff girls’ and Rowdyruff boys’ relationships were, and how we were the picture of perfection and that we’re all meant to be together. Entire image blogs dedicated to pictures of us.

All of it went on and on, spiraling into infinity.

This wasn’t some elaborate hoax. It wasn’t some joke. This was real.

My sisters and I had _dated_ the Rowdyruff brothers.

Adrenaline sailed through me as I abruptly reached and turned on my desktop printer, making sure I had plenty of printer paper inside of it. I clicked back to the results page that contained just the images, and I quickly got to work, compiling and printing any and everything.

Candid pictures, press conference pictures, anything I needed as evidence, I printed them. Then I printed news articles, as many as I could copy and paste from the most credible sources. I printed all of these things for two hours at the least, until I ran out of paper completely. And then I gathered all of my evidence, marching straight out of my room.

I heard my sisters in the living room, and I flew down the hallway and down the stairs to the main level of the house.

I stormed straight into the living room, not even bothering to glance at the television screen to see what they were watching before I reached for the power button and turned it off.

“Hey!” Buttercup exclaimed, predictably. “We were watching that!”

“Too bad!” I said, marching right over to the other side of the empty coffee table and slamming down my heavy, thick stack of evidence. The loud _wham_ it made echoed off of the ceiling.

My sisters jumped, staring down at the pile of papers I had thrown down. Alarmed, Bubbles asked, “What is that?”

“What, indeed,” I said, spreading the pile apart over the surface of the table so that the pages were displayed better. I snatched up a picture of Bubbles and Boomer—Boomer was hugging her from behind as Bubbles was laughing—and held it up for her to see. “Behold, Professor’s secret.”

Immediately, Bubbles grabbed the picture from my hands, disbelief on her face. “What…” she trailed off, frowning as her eyes grew wider. “What is this?”

Buttercup had leaned over to stare at the picture too, slack-jawed, and then she bent over the piles of pages, leafing through until a picture of her and Butch was exposed—his arm was slung over her shoulders, bringing her in close as he kissed the top of her head. Her hands froze momentarily. Then she grasped the picture in both hands, glaring at it in stunned silence.

I folded my arms, nodding. “Remember how we were wondering all this time why those magazines had a bunch of pages cut out of them?” I pointed down to all of my evidence. “This. This is why.” I picked up another picture Buttercup was in—it was a grainy, far away shot of the two facing each other, Butch lifting Buttercup up above him, his arms wrapped tightly around her hips, and Buttercup looking down at him, laughing and trying to wiggle out of his grasp. The very picture of bliss, it was the glaring opposite of that picture of him and that cop. I handed it to Buttercup. “Look for yourselves.”

Buttercup snatched the picture from my hand. “Is this for real?” Once again, she glared down at the picture as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing with her own eyes. “Tell me this is a joke.”

“It’s not a joke,” I said with a sigh.

“Why,” Bubbles paused. Her voice shook, just as her hands were shaking. “Why wouldn’t Professor tell us about any of this?”

“I wanted you to find out on your own,” Professor’s voice suddenly came from the kitchen doorway. All three of us whirled to look at him. His arms were folded, and he had the decency to look guilty. “I was honestly hoping that you would _remember_ on your own first, instead of finding all of those trashy articles written about all of you.”

My feelings of betrayal were quelled at his admission and were immediately buried by more shock. “So is it true, then?” I asked him. “About them, and us?”

Professor began to walk into the living room, and then he gestured to the couch. “Have a seat next to your sisters. I’ll explain everything.”

Quickly, I made my way over to the couch, sitting between my sisters. Then I looked up at him, nodding as a signal that he’d better start explaining.

To his credit, he started right away. “Girls, the Rowdyruff brothers are not just your ex-enemies. They’re your ex-teammates. And, yes—you were all romantically involved for about three years.”

My sisters and I quietly processed this. Bubbles had leaned forward, picking up more pictures of her and Boomer and emptily staring at them. Buttercup had her head in her hands. It seemed as though neither of them was going to speak, so I had to ask. “So…are we all broken up now?”

“Well, that’s where it gets complicated.” Professor blew air out. “When I reintroduced you all to each other weeks ago…well, I suppose I had hoped that upon sight, your memories would be jogged, and all would be well. But obviously, that wasn’t what happened. And it seems that it still hasn’t happened. Even with the sight of these pictures and articles,” he swept his hand over the piles of papers, “you still don’t seem to remember this level of involvement with them.”

I shook my head. Bubbles said, “I don’t remember any of this.” Her eyes were still full of slight fear and confusion.

“Neither do I,” Buttercup added. She looked frustrated and creeped out.

“It’s so peculiar,” Professor said to us, looking flummoxed. “I don’t understand why the home videos helped jog your memory, but these have done nothing for you all to remember the boys. It doesn’t make sense to me. Not at all.”

None of this made any sense to me.

How had I forgotten this?

There was so much that didn’t make sense to me. So many pieces that were missing. How had someone that had been my sworn enemy as a child become my… _boyfriend?_ How had his brothers dated my sisters? How did something like that even come to be?

Had we been brainwashed? Did we forget all of the horrible things they had done before? The horrible people that they were?

How could we have possibly forgotten what they were?

In the days that followed, my sisters and I kept returning to those pictures that I had printed out. But despite our persistence, those pictures remained empty and meaningless to us. No memories of them restored.

None at all.

#

Days after the discovery I’d made, my sisters and I had done our best to go about our days like we had been doing before, trying to go back to our peaceful summer routines.

And it didn’t take long before that peace was rudely interrupted with a detonation of reality that we didn’t have the privilege of overlooking.

“ _—Morbucks has been apprehended._ ”

Morbucks? Apprehended? My head snapped up, the passing news story on the television catching my attention at once, snatching my eyes away from the novel that I’d been comfortably reading on the couch.

The news anchor on the television went on, “ _This morning, the young former heiress was arrested on the charges of conspiring with the supervillain Him and the missing ex-supervillain Mojo Jojo on multiple counts of attempting to destroy the city with mutant monsters. She is also charged with illegal possession of the now-defunct Chemical X and possibly using corrupt means to attain it. The Townsville Police Department is investigating further on this count. While she has had questionable behavior in the past, as well as a history of trying to destroy the city before, her father’s status in the city always protected her from ever being properly charged. But the recent, sudden death of her billionaire father is what lead to her arrest, and it seems things will be very different for the polarizing ex-heiress from this point forward. With her current charges, after spending her time in court, she could spend up to 30 years in prison for her federal crimes._ ”

I had been sitting there listening to the unexpected news story in a dazed shock, and then it occurred to me that my sisters and Professor should be hearing this news. I snatched up the remote, rewinding the live TV feed and then pausing it to quickly leave and gather everybody into the living room.

Once I had everybody gathered in the room, I played the breaking news segment once again, looking over at the amazement and shock on all of their faces as it played.

“She’s actually…in jail?” Bubbles asked, though it seemed to be rhetorical.

“And we’re not the ones who put her there,” Buttercup commented, folding her arms. She’d been squinting at the TV screen in disbelief. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“The monsters,” I started, shaking my head. “Those monsters we fought last fall. She’d been the one that made them? With Mojo and Him?”

Professor nodded. “Yes. It…certainly appears that way.”

“Who’d have thought _she_ would be behind it?” Buttercup turned away from the TV as the news segment finished. “From the high school queen bee to being a felon again. I knew she was _horrible_ , but…” she trailed off, at a loss for words.

“I guess I never thought she would go back to a life of crime,” I said, building off of where Buttercup had left off. “I just thought she was done with it. That she had more interest in being Internet famous and getting promotional modeling deals on her social media. I didn’t think she would be capable of _this_ type of thing again.” Grudgingly, hating that I even had to admit that I’d been wrong about something, I admitted, “I underestimated her.”

“I think we all underestimated what she was capable of, Blossom,” Professor said to me. After pressing his lips together in thought, he added, as if he had been thinking it all along, “But I think that’s what she wanted.”

‘The element of surprise,’ I thought. It was the best move for the large-scale comeback she and Mojo would have wanted, I had to admit. And she had almost gotten away with it, which had made the plan all the more powerful. But things don’t always go as planned. And the time that had ruined our lives had ruined everything for them, too. Mojo reduced to a mere chimp. Princess’s money shield taken away for good.

But there was one thing that made me wonder.

“What about Him?” I asked the room suddenly, breaking the silence. I was frowning. “What would he have gained from working with them at all? Why would he stoop to their levels when he could do whatever he wanted?”

My sisters took my words into consideration, and they looked as dumbfounded as I felt. As for Professor, he had broken eye contact with us, moving away like he was about to go back down into the lab.

He lingered in the kitchen doorway, gripping one side of the archway with one hand. “Something tells me,” he said, with a peculiar tone to his voice, “that in the end, he might’ve gained from it more than we might think.” Then he shrugged in a ‘who knows’ sort of manner and turned, making his way into the kitchen toward the basement door. “If you’ll excuse me, girls, I have a thesis calling my name.”

All of us watched him go, and once again, I had the conviction that Professor knew more than he was letting on. But just as the last time I asked, I knew he would decline to tell me, so I wouldn’t ask again. Not until he was ready to tell us. I still trusted him regardless.

“Hey,” Buttercup interrupted the silence, turning to us and thrusting a thumb toward the direction Professor had left in. “Is it me, or did he sound like a fortune cookie just now?”

#

“Jojo,” I said to the chimp as I picked up a new flashcard, which had a picture of an inflatable ball on it. “What is this one?”

Jojo sat, looking at the card and lifting his hand into the air. Then, slowly, he signed the letters. B-A-L-L.

“Yes, that’s right! Very good, Jojo!” I exclaimed holding my other hand out, palm out. “High five!”

Jojo met my palm with his, giving me five as his lips pulled back from his teeth, grinning in his chimp-y way.

Sometimes I liked to come down to Jojo’s room in the lab. It was fun to watch him play, or wander around, or help him with his sign language vocabulary. It was times like this when I barely remembered what he used to be, and what we used to be to each other.

But today, I intended on not forgetting. Today I wanted to try something new. An experiment.

I flipped through more of the flash cards, looking for the particular one I had seen the last time I’d practiced this with him. Finding it, I said to Jojo, “Okay, ready for another one?” Jojo blinked. I held up the new flash card on it. It had a cartoon drawing of a stereotypical family on it. Two parents and two kids. “What’s this one, Jojo? Spell it for me.”

Jojo held up his hand. F-A-M-I-L-Y.

“Very good, Jojo. That’s a family. Very good,” I said. I pondered for a moment if he truly knew what the picture meant, or if he had just memorized its’ meaning.

Behind my back, tucked into the waistband of my sundress, I took out a picture from the Internet that I had printed out the night before. I brought it in front of me, adding it to the stack of flash cards in my hand. “One more for today,” I said. “Are you ready?”

Moment of truth. I turned the picture on the flimsy printer paper to face him. “Who is this, Jojo?”

The picture, containing the image of all three of the Rowdyruff Boys standing together, shook between my hands. I had purposely chosen a picture of them when they were much younger when they had still worked enthusiastically alongside Mojo.

Jojo stared at it for a long time. I could practically see the gears turning in his head. He really seemed to be taking it in, truly absorbing it, and it made my stomach flip flop.

Then, very slowly, he raised his hand. But instead of signing with it, he pointed to the picture. Then he poked it with his finger as if it were going to poke him back.

“Do you remember them, Jojo?” I whispered now, so I wouldn’t startle him out of his intense concentration. “You created them. Don’t you remember?”

Jojo lowered his hand from the picture, staring at the picture for a few more moments. He blinked. Then, without a care, Jojo stood and turned around. He wandered away from me, making his way over to his monkey bars, climbing up with his hands and feet and beginning to swing in between them. My stomach dropped sourly, though I wasn’t terribly surprised. I and my flashcards had been forgotten.

“Yeah,” I said, dissatisfied. Nodding slowly, I watched him play as I gathered up the flash cards from the floor, getting ready to exit. “Me neither.”

#

Even with all the progress my sisters and I had made over the last couple of months, some days, progress still felt as if it moved at a snail’s pace.

The more that our memories had returned to us, which had improved much faster than Professor had originally predicted, the more the existential agony had set in.

Some days, it felt as if I was walking around as an impostor, pretending to be okay. Pretending as each heartbeat ached. Pretending as if my own mind weren’t screaming at me, ‘What’s the point? What are you even doing?’ Pretending as if my life hadn’t once been so full and that I hadn’t lost it all. Like death hadn’t still become this constant, overhanging, horrifying reality for all of us ever since we’d managed the inconceivable and defeated it.

I still had flashes of memory that triggered bouts of panic, and nightmares about extreme dehydration that made me ache down to my muscles, roiling nausea that made it impossible to move, or about headaches that split my brain into two.

I knew this event would never be something I would get over. One doesn’t simply _get over_ death. It leaves its’ mark on someone in one way or another. The biggest challenge was dealing with this new weight on my shoulders—the reminder of what I had gone through would always be there. And the reminder would either build me up and keep me going or break me down into nothing.

I refused to let it break me down. Even letting it win for one second would be one second too long—it would wrap around me and pull me down and swallow me up like quicksand and suffocate me. So, I would learn to run with this new weight on me. Maybe some days I would walk—or maybe sometimes that walk would be more like a crawl, or like dragging myself forward by my fingertips.

But no matter what, I would keep moving. No matter what.

One thing I couldn’t help, though, was this persistent feeling of loss. This aching emptiness in my life.

Not quite like a hole. More like a Grand Canyon. A throbbing, screaming Grand Canyon of emptiness in my life.

Sometimes I felt this loss and grief and terror stronger than anything else. And these particular days, it felt almost impossible to even move my limbs, let alone even act normally as I went about my daily routines.

It was even worse at night, as if the darkness closed in on me and brought forth every horrifying thought it could manage. Often it kept me tossing and turning in a half-awake half-asleep fever nightmare.

These feelings were imperceptible on the outside. I wrestled with it ceaselessly, and yet my sisters and father had no idea. How could something that felt so overpowering be so invisible?

But I tried my best to live with it—to breathe through the relentless ache.

I knew I was missing something. And I longed— _ached_ —for those carefree, happy parts of my past to return to me. The fulfillment, the belonging I must have felt—why didn’t I feel that way now? Aside from our trauma, what had changed?

Though, it wasn’t as if I completely lacked belonging. Of course, I belonged to my sisters. That was one of the only things I was sure of these days.

My sisters and I were of the same kind—three of a kind. And if anything, I knew I would always belong to them, and they would always belong to me, without any doubt.

Though truly, we weren’t three of a kind—there were technically three more. Those ex-criminal brothers. The Rowdyruffs.

But as many memories that had returned to me since meeting them, none of my newly recalled memories were _of_ them. I still had those very fuzzy childhood memories of them as rivals, as did my sisters.

But the actual events that we had witnessed concrete evidence of in those pictures I had found on the Internet…it was as if they had never happened. It was like a giant blind spot in my brain. Perhaps if I had never found those pictures and articles, and had never seen the brothers in person with my very eyes, I would think that they didn’t even exist anymore.

If they were so important, wouldn’t we have remembered them that way by now? What was keeping those memories from coming back?

Part of me wished that I had kept some sort of record. A journal, or a blog, or something. Something that would help jog any memories.

Even as I wondered this, though, another part of me wondered if it was better that I couldn’t remember them that way. Pictures were just pictures. Pictures couldn’t capture everything within a relationship. Who’s to say that we might not have actually been happy with them?

Furthermore, what if it was fake? After all, it’s not like we could’ve ever loved them for real.

Maybe it was just that we had become a super team, and to look more united, we staged fake relationships with them so that the public would trust them—a public relations type of arrangement. Actors did those all the time with costars so that their movies would be more popular.

It had to be something like that. It had to be. Why else would they have been so forgettable to us? Maybe they were just coworkers to us after all.

The more I thought of this theory, the more it made sense to me. So much that over several days, this is what I began to suspect was the truth.

I even told my sisters about my theory, and they agreed, telling me that it made sense to them, too. That I had to be right. That maybe not even Professor knew of this secret arrangement we’d made with those brothers.

So, after I told them this, our discussions about those brothers went from frequent to none at all.

The Rowdyruff brothers, as a topic of memory conversations, held no more weight in our home any more than occasional talk of small local crime, or what the temperature outside would be the following Tuesday.

Despite everything, there was more for us to think about now—the future was now our oyster. We had so much ahead of us, so much to accomplish.

Next week, all three of us would go with Professor to Warner University. We would re-enroll for the following fall semester, and prepare to make our grand return to campus. I was so excited about it that every time I thought of it I had to keep myself from somersaulting into the air with joy.

In a few months, I would be back on my way to earning my biochemical engineering degree. We would live at home during our first fall semester back, just to be safe—but that didn’t matter. I would still be back at my beloved college soon. I would be back at my second home in just a few months’ time.

I could hardly wait.

#

One night the following week, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

I’d remembered. Steven. That was the name of a boy that I dated in high school. I couldn’t remember for how long I’d dated him.

I’d had a dream about him—no, maybe it was a memory. A memory of us sitting at the dining room table downstairs, quietly doing homework together. Once in a while I’d look up, see him staring at me. It made me uncomfortable, but I would smile at him anyway.

Then, the dream cut ahead through some unknown time frame. I was standing in our living room, dressed in a pretty dress. I had seen this dress somewhere before—perhaps in another memory. I was facing Steven, and I was utterly devastated—I was crying. And it felt like something had been ripped out of me.

Steven was glaring past me at something or someone, and then he looked straight at me. His grey eyes were so sad—he looked inconsolable. He looked at me like his entire world had been crushed.

As I had jolted awake in bed after the dream ended, I’d had the urge to call him. I looked at the clock. It was just past 1 AM. I suddenly had the very distinct feeling that I had called him this late before, but likely not for a very long time.

I picked up my cell phone, which Professor had just given back to me within past week or so. He’d had to change our numbers because the press had gotten a hold of our old numbers. And with the return of our phones, we were also allowed back on our social media accounts, officially. He had figured from my whole exposé I’d done behind his back that keeping us off the Internet any longer was doing us more harm than help—and at this point, we were going to get curious anyway.

Days earlier, I had looked at my long-abandoned public social media accounts, and it seemed like I had always kept the posts professional. There were no posts or hints of my private life at all. That was so like me, so I wasn’t terribly surprised by that. But it was too bad—if there had been pictures I hadn’t seen on there before, or specific status updates or anything like that, it could’ve helped me remember more long-term memories.

In my phone, I opened my contacts and scrolled through them, all the way down. There was no Steven in my phone. No Steven at all.

But Brick’s number was there.

It took me a while to realize it was him because he wasn’t under his actual name—there was a picture of him set as the contact picture, one that I seemingly took of him as he was reading something, his head dipped downward and his forehead furrowed in concentration. The contact name was, simply, ‘My Love’.

That contact name was something that I couldn’t understand. Because if the whole dating thing between us had been a fake Public Relations setup like I had thought, why would his name in my phone contacts be something so affectionate? In a place that only I would see it? Who had I done it for?

It didn’t make any sense to me. And it was the one thing that had exposed a giant, gaping flaw in my theory. And I didn’t like this feeling at all—doubting myself.

I sat awake in my bed, staring at his contact entry in my phone for what felt like half an hour. Then, as my eyelids began to droop with sleep again, I pressed the ‘ **Delete** ’ button.

‘ _Are you sure you want to delete ‘My Love’ from your contacts?_ ’ My phone prompted me. I frowned, hesitating.

Then slowly, I moved my thumb with finality to select ‘ **Yes** ’.

I did the same with his brothers’ numbers. And then it was done.

Erased. Forever.

My purpose, as I now knew for a fact, was to help this world. I was meant to protect with my super abilities, to share my intellect, to be someone for the girls and women of Townsville and beyond to admire and look up to. And to lead my sisters.

My role was so complex, so important. And why would I ever risk all of that to possibly fake date, or at least collaborate with, an ex-supervillain? To possibly, I assumed, agree to improve his image to the public by tarnishing my own?

It was irresponsible, and so unlike me. And I could not even begin to fathom why I had ever done such a thing.

All I wanted to do now was to erase what I had done. Go on as if it never happened. Unlike other parts of my past that had come back to me, I _wanted_ to forget this.

And now, with determination, I would. I would.

I had to.

#

One day, several days after I had deleted those three numbers from my phone, we got an unexpected call at the house.

After he answered the phone in the living room and exchanged a few sentences with whoever was on the other end of the line, Professor came through the kitchen entrance and over to me.

He was still holding the phone, and his hand was pressed over the phone’s receiver. “It’s the Townsville district attorney’s office. The prosecution lawyer wants to know if you and your sisters would be willing to testify against Princess Morbucks in court.”

My eyebrows shot up. I had decided to peruse school supplies online for our semester back, and much earlier than I really had to, just to get the best ones before they sold out. But this unexpected development now had my full attention. “Against?” I echoed.

“Yes.” Professor’s tone was serious. “He would like to speak to you.”

Now my eyes widened. “To me?” I pointed to myself. “Right now?”

He nodded, then I heard a tiny voice come from the phone’s tiny speaker. He pressed it to his ear again and spoke into the phone. “No, that won’t be necessary. Just one moment, please.” He covered the receiver with his hand once again. “He said they could call someone else if you’re not willing to do it.”

I hesitated, my throat tight. Then, lips pressed together, I shook my head. I held my hand out. “Let me talk to him.”

Professor said into the phone, “Blossom wants to speak to you. Here she is.” Then he handed me the home phone.

I took a deep breath, then released it. I pressed the phone to my ear, sitting back against the hard wooden back of the chair I sat in. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was deep and professional sounding. “Ms. Blossom Utonium, good afternoon. I’m so glad I could get a hold of you. My name is Ben Jones, I’m the chosen prosecution for the Princess Morbucks court case. Thank you for sparing a moment to speak with me.”

“It’s no problem at all,” I said, shaking my head even though he couldn’t see it. “What can I help you with?”

“Here’s the thing,” Mr. Jones started, “I’m up a creek, here. There are so few people willing to testify against Princess in court. Good old fashioned intimidation, you know? I mean, she’s a Morbucks. Very few people have been willing to go against them.”

“I see,” I said. I got it, I really did. I had seen plenty of that intimidation with my own eyes.

He went on. “And to be frank with you, if you and your sisters testified against her…it would basically be a guaranteed win. You’re superheroes, and you have a long past with her. And you’re partly the reason she’s finally been caught. If _anyone_ could help us finally send her behind bars, it would be you guys. So, if you could just take some time to consider doing this, it would mean the worl—”

“Okay.”

He paused. Then politely, he asked, “Excuse me?”

I clarified, “Okay. We’ll do it.” I looked up to see Professor nodding down at me in approval. Tentatively, I smiled. “We’ll testify against her.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Jones said on the other end. He sounded so relieved. “Wow. This is great. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Ms. Utonium. You won’t regret this, I promise you.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” I replied. This was our last chance to take Princess down, and possibly for good. Something told me Bubbles and Buttercup wouldn’t be opposed to this whatsoever.

“The court date is July 20th,” said Mr. Jones, sounding as if he were frantically typing something. “At 11 A.M. If you’ll give me your email address, I’ll email you all of the finer details.”

After briefly giving him my email, we hung up. Then, wordlessly, I offered the phone back to Professor. Professor reached to grab it from my hand. “This will be your first official public appearance since…” his voice trailed off.

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. “I know.”

Professor went to put the phone back where it belonged, then he came back over to me, sitting next to me at the kitchen table. “How does it feel?”

I closed my eyes tightly. My fists clenched. “Terrifying,” I said.

T-minus one week. One week until facing the public, the _world,_ for the first time in what felt like decades. One week until facing one of our old opponents for what might be—for what would _hopefully_ be—the last time for a very long time. This felt like diving headfirst into a vortex.

I clenched my fists tighter, and I opened my eyes. I turned to look at the calendar on the far wall of the kitchen. My eyes narrowed on July 20th.

One week to prepare myself and my sisters for this day, which would really be a battle of a different kind in and of itself. And when it came?

We would be ready.

 

#

The 20th of July came.

Just as one might expect of the dead of summer, this day, in particular, was scorching. We were in the middle of a legendary heat wave, but the weatherman on channel 10 had said it was one of the hottest days Townsville had seen in 30 years.

And just as the weather itself was remarkable, many other remarkable things were to happen on this day.

On our drive over to the courthouse, we passed cars parked on the sides of the road that had overheated engines. There were kids splashing through kiddie pools in front yards, and running through sprinklers, and throwing water balloons. The tinkering tune of ice cream trucks filled the air of residential neighborhoods.

I took in these sights as we passed them by. Surrounding my senses in these comforting, familiar summertime sights were helping to calm my nerves.

This court appearance would be our first official public appearance since we had been revived and had mostly healed as we relearned our world. And the thought of facing hordes of the press after so long was incredibly daunting.

“Remember girls,” Professor had said to us before we’d left the house, “sunglasses on, faces down. Do not engage. You are not required to answer any of their questions. You don’t owe them anything, not even after being out of the spotlight for so long. The police will be there to keep the press under control.”

We had all spent most of the drive to downtown Townsville in a deep silence, the car’s air conditioner roaring and the car’s engine being the only sounds. The air conditioner needed to be fixed, though—the air wasn’t nearly as cool as it needed to be, and lukewarm air blowing at our faces wasn’t enough to keep our legs from sticking to the leather seats.

Sometime later, a little too soon for my liking, we had arrived.

The Townsville courthouse was beautiful. It was one of the oldest buildings in town, and it had managed to stay out of the way of most attacks the city had weathered, so it was also the most well-preserved. The dome of the building arched up high above the rest of the building, and the stained glass it was partially made of reminded me of a cathedral. On the numerous front steps of the courthouse, however, were hordes and hordes of reporters. There must have been at least two hundred of them. Buttercup groaned at the sight of them all, and Bubbles made a nervous whimpering sound. I only sighed.

After Professor parked his car in a non-conspicuous area in the courthouse’s parking lot, we sat waiting for our police escorts to arrive at our car—they had been parked at the edge of the parking lot, keeping a look out for Professor’s car, and once they spotted us, they followed us.

Within minutes, eight uniformed police officers had come to stand by our car. Professor looked over at me in the passenger’s seat and then turned to look at my sisters in the backseat. I glanced back at them, too.

Bubbles was in her powder blue floral mid-length, belted sundress with cap sleeves, along with a pair of heels, and Buttercup was in an oversize Iron Maiden t-shirt knotted in the front with black cutoff shorts and her neon green lace-up Vans. I had asked her to try to dress a little more appropriately for a court appearance, maybe something like my denim skater skirt and blush-colored, sleeveless mock neck blouse and sandals, but she’d ignored me.

She hadn’t even removed her small hoop nose ring when I’d asked, or opted for a more neutral lipstick instead of her deep purple lipstick when I’d suggested it. I sighed inwardly. At least her hair looked nice. Her hair had now grown out somewhat and resembled a neat Mia Farrow style pixie cut. Just as her buzzcut had, it looked ridiculously charming on her. I was rather jealous.

“Well,” Professor said, unbuckling his own seatbelt. “It’s now or never.” He had changed out of his lab clothes into a more regular looking dress shirt, tie, and dress pants. He looked nice.

I nodded, sighing again, and unbuckled my seat belt too. Now or never.

With all of us out of the car, the officers gave us a polite greeting, and then all 12 of us headed to the front of the courthouse, knowing that soon the piranhas would awaken.

Once one or two of the reporters had spotted us, the rest quickly followed, and soon a whole ocean of people was shouting at us and running at us, cameras flashing and microphones thrust out towards us.

The officers tried their hardest to keep them all at bay, but that meant our progress up the grand steps was slow. Professor stood in front of us within the huddle the police provided, and my sisters and I held hands, keeping our heads ducked downward and our mouths shut.

The humid, hot air pressed in on us from all sides, which was made worse by all the surrounding body heat, not to mention the odors of sweat and sunscreen mixing together with melting perfumes and colognes into something horrible. The shouts, the camera shutters, the shoving bodies—it was all so overpowering. I hadn’t remembered all of this. I didn’t ask for this.

I hated this. I hated this so much. Why did we decide to come here? It was a horrible idea. We should have just stayed home and continued living our relaxing summer. I would rather have been reading out in the backyard with my feet dipped into a kiddie pool.

Nonetheless, our little huddle pressed on through the press hornet’s nest, moving slowly but surely toward the double front doors of the courtroom. My hands still gripping my sisters’, we continued to refuse to look up.

So, I suppose, that’s why the sudden high-pitched voice calling my name brought me out of my tense daze like a jolt.

“Blossom!”

I heard the small voice through the adult reporters shouting from somewhere behind me, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I turned to look. And immediately I saw a small, tan and skinny arm with a small hand holding a lone dandelion flower, and a small, scared face peeking through the tall bodies of the reporters, who didn’t even seem to care that they were squishing a child.

Before I could stop myself, I let go of my sisters, and I reached a hand out toward him. “Stop!” I yelled at the reporters. “You’re crushing him!” Immediately I rushed over to the little hand holding the dandelion, and I clutched onto the hand with mine. “Let him through!” I instructed.

“Blossom?” I heard the unspoken question in Buttercup’s low voice behind me. I glanced back at her, only nodding at her and Bubbles in reassurance as they stared at me in question.

I turned back, and as the two officers on either side of me pushed the careless reporters aside, I took the little boy’s shoulders and pulled him out of the dense crowd, into our safe huddle. I bent down to look him in the face. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

The boy laughed. He had the sweetest face and sparkling almond-shaped eyes. His two front teeth were missing. “Yeah, I’m all right. Thanks to you!” He held up the dandelion to me. “I picked this for you!”

The crowd had quieted, and I could feel every camera on us. But, oddly, I didn’t mind. I accepted the dandelion, grinning. “For me? Why, thank you.” I placed the stem of the flower behind my ear so that the flower poked out from the curled tendrils of my hair. “There. Now my hair looks pretty.”

“You always look pretty!” he told me, and then his small face grew very worried. “Blossom, are you still sick?”

Professor had told us to avoid the press’ questions. But there was no way I could ignore a question when it came from a little boy this sweet. Immediately, I answered, “No, I’m not. I’m all better now.”

A big smile burst onto his face now, and dimples appeared on either side of his face. I melted a little. He shouted, “Good! You gotta feel good to kick bad guys’ butts!” The whole crowd burst into laughter, including me.

Suddenly, one of the police officers said to me, “It looks like you have more admirers. Should we bring them over?” I looked over to where he was gesturing, and there was a group of more hopeful, excited-looking kids around the same age range who were each holding pieces of paper.

I nodded, smiling. “Yeah, let them through!”

The officers guided them through the crowd to us, and the excited kids burst through. One girl came running directly to me, throwing her arms around me so tightly it felt like she wanted to squeeze all the air out of my lungs.

“Whoa!” I said, bending down slightly to wrap my arms around her tiny shoulders. “Hello there. You’re good at hugs!”

The little girl looked up at me so brightly that I couldn’t help but smile down at her. She had red hair, too, and rosy cheeks. “I love you, Blossom!” she said to me. “I love you so, so much!”

Just like that, tears pricked in my eyes. Seemed to happen at the drop of a hat these days. I was glad once again that I was wearing these big sunglasses. I was so touched that for a moment I couldn’t speak. Then I gently squeezed her back. “That means so much to me. Thank you.”

The kids began giving me and my sisters handmade get-well-soon cards, and the press was practically in a frenzy trying to capture every moment. They gave us hugs and high fives, and even Buttercup was in on it, even though in the past she had sworn up and down that she hated kids.

But when a little girl approached Buttercup and pointed to her own almost hairless head, telling her she’d shaved her head so that she’d look as cool as her hero Buttercup, I could have sworn that Buttercup looked a little glassy-eyed through her reflective aviator sunglasses—at least, from what I could tell with my momentary x-ray squint.

And in this moment, I felt it so strongly— _this_. _This_ was why we were who we were, and why we did what we did.

Not for these reporters. Not to feel like an animal in a zoo. We did it for them. These kids, the citizens who needed us now, and would need us for as long as we remained around.

And it was as simple as that.

Before we knew it, fifteen minutes had passed, and we couldn’t be late for the trial. So we said goodbye to the kids, and now that the press was satisfied with the footage that would surely be all over the five o’clock news that evening, there was much less resistance as we headed inside.

Right before we walked through the entrance, though, a lone journalist, maybe a blogger, with a recording smartphone outstretched called my name. “Pardon me, Blossom?”

Deciding that he was harmless and that it couldn’t hurt, I turned to him and paused just as the heavy, tall doors in front of us opened. “Yes?” I asked, wary.

He smiled at me, making his face look kind. “Welcome back.”

I smiled back at him, feeling a hand pulling on my arm, urging me forward—Bubbles. “Thank you,” I said to him as I walked through the doorway. Then I turned and disappeared inside the cool, air-conditioned courthouse as the doors swung closed behind my officer escorts.

And what a welcome back it had been.

#

“Thank you, defense and prosecution, for both of your opening statements.” Townsville’s Supreme Court judge, Maisy Jackson, was someone I had admired for a long time. One of Townsville’s most praised judges, I was now sitting in her courtroom and listening to her speak. It was like listening to a queen address her court. “As I know it, the defense was unable to attain witnesses and has refused to testify. So, with that, I turn the floor to the prosecution.”

Currently, I wasn’t looking at her. At Princess.

I had been determined not to look at her when she had first come in, but then I had slipped for mere seconds. Black, beady eyes just as I remembered. Full of contempt, entitlement, and hatred. Being looked at that way reminded me of our hellish high school years with her, and the hellish middle school years, and the elementary school ones before that.

She was clad in a neon orange jumpsuit that clashed unflatteringly with her dark red hair, which was straightened permanently these days, and made her spray-tanned skin look even more unnatural. Interestingly, though, prison orange suited her. Karma was sweet.

But I could feel her piercing gaze all the way from the defendant’s bench. Her gaze hadn’t left us once since she’d first entered the courtroom with police officer guards on either side of her.

The courtroom was packed with people, too. But she only glared at us. I could practically imagine all the fantasy strangulation scenarios running through her head.

“Prosecution, you may call your first witness.”

“Thank you, your Honor. Prosecution calls witness Bubbles Utonium to the stand.”

Bubbles looked over at me, her eyebrows furrowed in worry. I reached over, rubbing her shoulder and giving her a reassuring grin. She nodded, took in a deep breath, and then stood from our bench.

Steadily and gracefully, hands clenched in front of her, she made her way over to the stand. Her heels clicked against the wood floors, and the sound echoed off the high ceilings in the silent room. I had advised her to wear her demure tan-colored ones rather than her favorite ‘lucky’ mermaid pumps that were covered in pure turquoise glitter and seashells, and I was glad she had taken my advice.

Bubbles arrived at the stand, sitting down and looking down as she smoothed her skirt over her legs, though we couldn’t see her from mid-torso down. It was one of her nervous habits. Just as well, she reached up to tuck some of her hair behind her ear—another nervous habit.

The judge cleared her throat. “Will the witness please stand to be sworn in by the bailiff?”

Flustered, Bubbles immediately jumped back up from her seat, biting down on her bottom lip in embarrassment. “Sorry,” she mouthed to Ms. Jackson.

Ms. Jackson, ever the judge with the kindest, most down-to-Earth personality, only slightly grinned with patience in response.

The bailiff had made his way over to Bubbles, and she placed her left hand on the Bible he held out.

“Please raise your right hand,” the bailiff requested. Bubbles complied. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” The stern-faced bailiff asked her in his deep voice.

She nodded. “Yes, I do.”

The bailiff took the Bible away. “You may be seated.”

The state prosecution lawyer, Mr. Jones, stood, making his way over to the stand. He was very tall, had curly hair that was cut short with thick sideburns, and he was properly dressed, unlike _one_ of my sisters. Formally, he said, “Good afternoon, Ms. Utonium. Thanks for being here.”

At his politeness, a slight grin cracked the staid nervousness on Bubbles’ face. “Sure,” she said.

Mr. Jones got right to it. “Ms. Utonium, let’s talk about the incident almost 4 years ago, an incident that I’m sure most of this courtroom can recall—the widely-covered incident that transpired between your sister, Blossom Utonium, and the accused at a public park.”

My stomach flip-flopped. I certainly remembered that. I would never forget the humiliation. Even years later, at just the mere mention of the incident, I felt people seated in that courtroom turn their heads to look at me, and with my face carefully composed and shoulders held back, I resisted the urge to look at their expressions—to gauge their level of judgment.

“You mean the fake incident?” answered Bubbles without missing a beat, pleasant smile still on her face.

The courtroom stirred collectively. I bit my lip to keep from bursting into a giggle. Buttercup, on the other hand, snorted audibly. I nudged her with my elbow.

Mr. Jones raised his eyebrows. “Do you mean to say that your sister Blossom attacking Princess Morbucks did _not_ happen?”

Smile still intact, Bubbles nodded delicately. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, sir.”

“Objection!” cried a voice, and everyone turned to look at Princess’s defense lawyer, Mr. White, standing up from his seat next to Princess. “Your Honor, this witness is clearly trying to gaslight this courtroom. She’s claiming an event that we _all_ saw on the news didn’t happen. That is outrageous.”

Mr. Jones calmly turned to Mr. White. “Mr. White, my witness has not explained herself. Do not put words into her mouth.”

“Mr. Jones is correct, Mr. White,” the judge responded, her voice echoing and authoritative. “You have interrupted the witness before she even had a chance to explain herself. Sit down.”

The defense lawyer did as she instructed, though not looking pleased about it. The judge nodded at Mr. Jones, signaling him to go on.

He turned toward the jury, examining their faces, and then turned back to Bubbles, frowning. “Ms. Utonium. How can you claim that this event did not happen when the accused was interviewed many different times over this incident?”

“Simple,” said Bubbles calmly. “She lied.” This time, I couldn’t help it—I smiled. I turned my face downward to hide it.

“She lied?” Mr. Jones repeated. For all his theatrical responses, he didn’t seem all that surprised. “About what?”

‘Come on, sis,’ I thought, reaching over to grab Buttercup’s hand. ‘Don’t hold back.’

As if she had heard me, Bubbles really came through. “About everything. Blossom would never attack any human with her powers, even when threatened. All of us know much better than to do that. Not to mention that if she _had_ attacked Princess, Princess would’ve had to be put in the hospital. She didn’t even have a scratch if you recall.”

The murmurs in the courtroom had grown to a hum, and the judge pounded her gavel. “Order,” she called out. “Order in the court.”

The audience was silenced.

“So, what you’re saying is,” Mr. Jones paused for a couple of beats, probably for dramatic effect, “the defense has a _history_ of exaggerating stories in the media?”

A moment ticked by, and then the unthinkable happened—Bubbles _smirked_. She actually _smirked!_ I was so proud. “Well, that,” said Bubbles, “and a history of paying media sources to skew their stories in her favor.”

Obviously, that had been the exact response he’d been looking for. Mr. Jones smiled. “Just like she had paid media sources after the Townsville Park battle to make you and your teammates appear to be incompetent, and to sway public opinion against you?”

“Yes.”

“Objection!” Mr. White cried out, jumping from his seat again. “Hearsay!”

“Overruled. Sit down, Mr. White,” Ms. Jackson said again. Mr. White sat, petulant.

More murmuring. Buttercup and I tightened our hold on each other’s hands. She was killing it. Risking a glance over at Princess on the bench, she was glaring maliciously at Bubbles.

Mr. Jones had turned to look at the jury once again, and then he turned back to Bubbles. “All right, all right. Let’s switch gears, here. Going back to the incident 4 years ago, what sort of ramifications did this incident have for you and your sisters in your daily lives, outside of the media?”

Bubbles answered, “Well, it basically caused all our classmates to alienate us.”

“Go on,” he coaxed.

She went on. “Princess used all the media’s sensationalizing to her advantage, and she spread tons more rumors about us. She claimed that Blossom was crazy and that none of us could be trusted because of it. One by one, our classmates turned on us. They isolated us and stared at us and called us names. Even people who had been our friends had turned on us.”

“Even your friends turned against you?” Mr. Jones asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Jones, frowning, said next, “Ms. Utonium, in your opinion, from that sole negative experience you had with the accused in high school, would it seem impossible to you that she could orchestrate the same effects outside of a high school setting?”

“Not impossible at all,” Bubbles responded. “Really, at that point, she already had. People have brought up this incident up for years, and it didn’t even really happen. There are still people from all over the world that still believe that it really happened.”

“What _did_ happen that day, exactly? Could you explain it to us?” Mr. Jones folded his hands together, starting a slow pace in front of the stand.

“Blossom had a horrible morning,” Bubbles started. “Princess had caught her at her worst, called the paparazzi and told them of Blossom’s location and then instigated a heated argument in public in order to make it look like an attack. To humiliate and demean her.”

Mr. Jones hummed. “In short, we can all pull from your account that, at the very least, Princess Morbucks has made it a mission to verbally and perhaps emotionally harass you and your sisters for years now. Correct?”

“Correct,” replied Bubbles as she nodded. Buttercup and I also nodded, even though he hadn’t been talking to us.

“One more question for you, Ms. Utonium, before I give the floor to defense,” Mr. Jones said, stopping his pacing and standing in front of Bubbles again. “Are there any other major instances of emotional abuse or bullying from the accused during your high school years that you can recall?”

Bubbles’ eyebrows raised as she thought for a moment. “I don’t even know where to start,” she admitted.

“Just one more is sufficient enough,” Mr. Jones assured her.

Bubbles paused. Then she frowned, looking downward into her lap. Silence ticked by.

Suddenly, the defense lawyer sprang up from his seat again. I was beginning to wonder if there was some sort of launch mechanism on his chair. He was like a jack-in-the-box from hell. “Your Honor, the witness is obviously stalling because she doesn’t have any other instances of ‘abusive behavior’ from my client.” He placed air quotes around ‘abusive behavior’. My lip curled.

“Objection!” Mr. Jones cried this time, turning to the judge. “Your Honor, the defense is badgering the witness. And out of turn, at that.”

“Order!” Judge Jackson called, pounding her gavel once. She aimed a cutting scowl at the defense lawyer. “Mr. White, if you do not sit down, and _remain seated_ , I will be tempted to shorten your time to cross-examine the witness. I do not allow bullying in my courtroom.”

Mr. White, who had a rather large and pointy nose, quickly sat back down, face screwed up in annoyance. Princess looked equally annoyed. Two pinched up rat-like faces. Mr. Jones turned back to Bubbles at the stand, looking at her patiently. “Go on, Ms. Utonium.”

Buttercup leaned over to me. “Hey,” she whispered to me, “what’s up with her?”

I had noticed, too. Throughout the lawyer squabbling, Bubbles had been staring downward, rubbing her head and frowning hard as if she were in pain. Something was up. “I don’t know,” I whispered back.

“Of course,” Bubbles finally answered, her voice thin. She cleared her throat. “After the public park incident, at school, Princess spread false rumors. She started rumors about my sister being violent and bloodthirsty. The worst of the rumors she spread were that Blossom was planning to attack the whole school. Horrible rumors. They started out about Blossom, and then as they spread, they included me and Buttercup.” She tilted her head, looking at Mr. Jones earnestly. “These rumors lasted until we graduated high school, and they were severely hurtful and damaging, especially considering our jobs as superheroes. And they were especially hurtful because…” she paused. “Because the three of us were already dealing with some deep hurt stemming from our personal lives.”

I frowned. Somehow, it seemed like she had changed her mind and decided to rephrase her words at the last moment. What had she been about to say instead?

“But I suppose that didn’t matter to Princess. Our hurt.” Bubbles shook her head as she finished. “It never mattered to her.”

A satisfied Mr. Jones nodded, glancing sideways at the jury, then he turned to the open courtroom. “No further questions.” He walked back over to his table, pulling his chair out to sit down and taking a sip from a bottle of water.

After a momentary pause, Judge Jackson announced, “The defense may have the floor.”

Mr. White stood up from his seat, finally free to have his turn. Slowly making his way over to the stand, he smirked at my sister, looking altogether creepy and predatory. My stomach churned. This was going to be maddening. “Hello, Ms. Utonium.”

All politeness had wiped off Bubbles’ face. Flatly, she said, “Hello.”

Mr. White cut to the chase. “Ms. Utonium, can you honestly claim, without a reasonable doubt, that my client was truly so awful to you and your sisters?”

Bubbles paused, blinking. “Yes,” she said as if it were obvious.

“Really?” Mr. White responded, rubbing his chin. Lawyers sure were dramatic. “Well, consider this. Consider the fact that you and your sisters had never even considered letting my client join your superteam, and were prejudiced against her for being human. Consider the fact that you never even tried to be _friends_ with my client, and all you ever did was shut her out.”

I leaned forward, looking to where Princess was seated. Arms folded, she had a subdued smile on her face. So, this was their angle. Sympathy.

“That’s not true,” Bubbles answered, keeping her cool perfectly. “We did try to be her friend once when we first met her. But then she tried to coerce her way into our team, and we had to turn her away.”

“’Coerce?’” Mr. White repeated on a laugh. “You do realize you’re talking about when all of you were five or six years old, don’t you Ms. Utonium? And you’re telling us that an _innocent five-year-old_ —” he emphasized this point heavily, looking out at the crowd, “Could _coerce_ someone?”

Bubbles nodded. “Yes,” she said.

“How would she be able to coerce you at such a young age?” Mr. White shot back.

“Using her fathers’ money,” she answered. She gave a half shrug. “She was always that way. Even from an early age. But we couldn’t be bought.” She shifted her gaze from Mr. White to Princess. “And the fact that we were the only thing that couldn’t be bought just egged her on more.”

Whispers. Mr. White was quiet for a moment, returning to the table where his briefcase sat, rifling through some papers momentarily. I looked at Princess again. Pale-faced rage was written all over her face as she whisper-barked sharp-tongued orders at him.

Quickly, though, Mr. White turned back around, clearing his throat and seeming to regain his composure. “Ms. Utonium,” he started again, voice loud, “you claimed that my client had purposely sought to humiliate your sister in that public incident four years ago, correct?”

“Yes.”

“What was it that could have possibly put your sister in such a dour mood that she would _scream_ at my client for any reason at all, and in such an unhinged manner? And don’t try to claim that your sister didn’t scream at her. We all saw that footage. That was real.”

I swallowed hard, trying to will myself not to feel the humiliation. I couldn’t remember why I had been in such a horrible mood in the first place—it was so long ago, and furthermore, memories from the night prior to that were still blank for me. It was the night we went to that teen club to celebrate our 16th birthdays.

But I still couldn’t remember most of that night. It was mostly blank for me. Did Bubbles remember? And did she remember why I had been so upset about it?

I leaned forward, shooting Professor a panicked look. He deciphered its’ meaning immediately, and he leaned forward to whisper to Mr. Jones—likely to remind him of our memory issues that he had warned him of prior to today. Mr. Jones nodded grimly, looking back at Professor.

Meanwhile, Bubbles was silent. She had looked down again, and she had an entire palm plastered to her forehead, her eyes squeezed shut. Mr. White was tapping his foot, full smugness returned to his face. A few more moments passed, and Mr. White spoke up, smugness leaking into his voice. “May I remind you, Ms. Utonium, that you are under oath?”

Mr. Jones stood, preparing to interject if he needed to, medical papers detailing our memory loss in his hand, ready to hand them to the judge.

Suddenly, Bubbles spoke, “I…” she trailed off and looked up, appearing dazed. Her eyes were slightly unfocused. She dropped her hand. Finally, she continued in a soft, shaky voice, “Yes. I remember. I…I’ll tell you.”

Surprise jolted through me. I felt Buttercup sit up straight next to me. We traded looks with each other, then with Professor. Did she remember? When had she remembered this? Appearing confused, Mr. Jones sat back down again.

“Go on then, Ms. Utonium.” Judge Jackson told her patiently. “Answer Mr. White’s question.”

Bubbles nodded, a determined frown on her face. She turned her eyes back to Mr. White and spoke succinctly. “Blossom was upset that morning because the previous night, the three of us had attended a teen club called Electric Blue. At the club that night, the Rowdyruff boys were in attendance. And that night, the Rowdyruff brothers, the brothers who were once our sworn enemies until the events that very night…” she hesitated, looking over at Buttercup and me in the crowd, “…the Rowdyruff brothers confessed to having romantic feelings for us.”

Gasps from all around. Murmurs and whispers. My jaw dropped. Even the judge had raised her eyebrows. I glanced at Princess again—she was gaping at Bubbles. No one had been expecting that.

Quickly, I shut my mouth before anyone could see, but squeezed Buttercup’s hand. She turned her face into my hair, whispering so that no one else could hear, “What the hell is she saying? Is she serious?”

“I don’t know,” I mouthed back to her.

Bubbles went on despite the widespread controversial reaction, “The shock all three of us experienced from this night was enough to leave us in emotional turmoil for months afterward. So, the morning after, at the park where Blossom had gone alone in order to clear her thoughts, she was an on edge and overwhelmed teenager. Don’t you remember what it was like to be sixteen and insecure? Princess had gone over to her to purposely upset her. Of _course_ she’d snapped.” She turned her face to the jury, eyes wide and sincere and brimming with tears. “Wouldn’t you have?”

My heart was pounding. I felt Buttercup’s pulse, too—it was racing. What was Bubbles doing? Why was she lying on the stand?

Then something occurred to me…what if she wasn’t lying at all?

But how could that have been the truth? How?

The murmuring had risen in volume again, and the judge pounded her gavel. “Order,” she commanded.

Mr. White had been standing very still. It was as if Bubbles’ confession had rocked him to his core. He clearly hadn’t been prepared for that. He shifted from foot to foot for a few moments, wrung his hands together, and then slowly, he turned to face the courtroom. “No further questions,” he said.

Bubbles was dismissed from the stand. And then immediately, without even sitting down again, she excused herself, telling us that she had to use the restroom. She exited the courtroom quietly.

As I watched her leave, my eyebrows drawn together in concern and confusion, I wondered if my sister had just lied, under oath, to an entire courtroom.

* * *

 

**-Bubbles’ POV-**

I ran through the halls of the courthouse as best as I could in heels, ignoring the stares, searching, knowing that the bathrooms had to be around there somewhere. Finally, I found the signs, and I rushed over to them, pushing through the door to the women’s bathroom.

I bent, checking for feet underneath all of the stalls. There were no feet. I was alone. Finally.

I turned to the nearest sink, turning the cold water on high and splashing water on my arms, forcing myself to cool off and calm down. I gripped the sides of the sink with both hands as the water ran, peering up into the mirror, looking at my own wild, wide eyes as I breathed heavily.

“God,” I said between breaths. I was on the verge of sobbing. “Oh my God.”

I remembered.

A rooftop with stars. A soft touch. The moonlight that lit up the emotion on the curves of his face.

Holding hands, reciting lines to a play. A spirited argument in a high school hallway, followed by a kiss that changed everything.

Cupcakes. Greek food. Afternoon flies. Slow dancing in a kitchen. Napping, heartbeats, and breathing that rose and fell together like the notes of a song. A head in my lap, nestled under my hands, shaking hysterical sobs that I could see but couldn’t hear.

All at once I remembered everything. Up on that stand, it was like the pressure of having to remember, _needing_ to remember that one tiny detail, as all those eyes were on me—it made it all explode, like a tidal wave breaking through floodgates. That one little detail I recalled was the catalyst, made it all implode, and now I remembered it all.

And now that I remembered, everything had changed. My whole _world_ had changed.

I needed to leave that place. Now. _Right_ now, right that very moment.

In one quick motion, I switched the water off on the faucet, and then I turned, then turned again, and my eyes locked on it—a window on the wall. My perfect escape. I looked for a latch, and thankfully there was one on the old window. I pushed the window open, pleased to find that there wasn’t a screen on the outside.

I lifted into the air, levitating through the open window soundlessly and gracefully. It was wide enough for me to fit through without brushing up against the ledge or anything, so my hair and dress were untouched.

When I got outside, I touched down into the lawn below. Teetering awkwardly across the grass on my heels for a few feet, I thought better of it, bending and lifting each foot to take my heels off, holding one in each hand. The lush grass was cool against my bare feet.

I would have to make my getaway relatively unnoticed. The press would still be waiting outside the front doors, I knew that. I was on the back end of the building, so if I flew in the opposite direction of them, I would be home free.

As I glanced to my left, I suddenly spotted a man standing several feet away from me, smoking a cigarette. He looked like a janitor. His eyes were locked on me, and he was frozen, seemingly in shock. He recognized me. Uh oh.

I lifted a hand, waving slightly. “Hi there,” I greeted. Hesitant, he lifted a hand in response, waving back awkwardly. I clasped both of my hands together in a pleading gesture. “Please don’t tell anyone you saw me leave like this. It’s kind of an emergency.”

He blinked at me. Then, hesitant again, he nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I won’t.”

I sighed, relieved. “Thank you!” I said. Then, deciding I really needed to leave now, and _fast_ , I gripped my shoes hard in my hands, preparing for lift off. Then, being careful not to take off too fast, I lifted into the air—gently at first, slowly levitating upward. I heard the janitor guy’s cigarette hit the ground. Then, away I flew, and I was gone.

The feeling of speeding through the air, Townsville far beneath me, was incredible—strange, but in the most perfect way. There was once a time when I had believed that I would never be able to do this ever again. Feeling the air wrapped around me, whipping past me, feeling weightless—it felt like a miracle. Because it was.

I made my way through the air, leaving deeper into downtown Townsville. And it was only then that I realized I had no idea where I was even going.

I was going to find him. But thinking that wasn’t enough. Because to begin with, I had no idea where he even _was_.

I didn’t know where he and his brothers lived now. And furthermore, I didn’t even know if he would be home. What if he were somewhere else? He could be _anywhere!_ I hadn’t thought this through at all. Why did I think this was a good idea? Now I would have to fly all across town in search for him, like a crazy person!

Of course, I remembered, I could technically teleport now. But our version of teleporting only let us teleport several feet at a time, like a stone skipping across a lake. And we still weren’t fully used to doing it. Buttercup was the best at it right now. She had managed to teleport across thirty feet once, but afterward, she’d still had to lie down flat on the ground because of how much it had disoriented her.

I’d barely had any practice doing it, so, what good would that do me now? Absolutely none. I needed my wits about me if I was going to find him. I needed all the focus I could get.

And right now, being so far up in the sky wasn’t helping me all that much. The fresh air gave me a clear head, but it definitely wasn’t giving me any ideas. And ideas were what I needed most. I needed to be immersed in busy surroundings so I could better picture where he might be.

I decided that downtown might be my best bet after all, so I abruptly stopped moving forward, lowering myself far down toward the sidewalk below as gently as possible.

I landed with my bare feet against the scorching pavement. I hissed in through my teeth. The heat didn’t hurt me, but it didn’t particularly feel good either. As I uncomfortably scrambled to place my shoes down so I could put them on again, I pictured my feet as two giant cookies baking in an oven.

I had only grabbed a handful of people’s attention as I had landed, but likely due to the current unrelenting sweltering heat, they kept moving—though not without staring at me first. The hot sidewalks were busy and packed full of people moving to get to their destinations without being outside too long or getting sunburnt.

People walked past either side of me busily, and fortunately for me, many of them were distracted by their cellphones or getting to where they were going and didn’t look up at me. I was grateful for that—I didn’t think I could handle being mobbed for a second time today.

My shoes now on, I observed my surroundings. Unrelenting sunlight glinted off the windows of the high skyscrapers which stretched up high above, the smell of gasoline filled the hot air, and regular city noises enveloped me. It had been so long since I’d been downtown. Too long.

Now, I had to think. Where could Boomer be? Where could I start?

I began to walk behind a group of people, following the flow of bodies so that I wouldn’t stand out by standing in the middle of the sidewalk like a statue. As I walked, dipping my face downward and ducking behind the tallest member of the group I was following, I began to brainstorm.

Where could he have been? Where, where, where?

In the traffic packed road next to me, a car stalled. The windows were rolled down, and Frank Sinatra was blasting out of its’ speakers.

Frank sang of flying to the moon and playing among the stars. Just ahead, the traffic light turned green, and the sound of his singing faded as the car drove further way. The sound of it had immediately made something arise inside of me. That song. The slow dance in the kitchen.

 _Our_ song. Baking the cakes.

I bit back a gasp. A bakery!

A lead! I finally had one!

‘But think, Bubbles,’ my thoughts persuaded. ‘Think. What bakery would he be the most likely to go to if he were to go to any at all?’ The group ahead of me stopped at a crosswalk, preparing to cross the street. I paused behind them, keeping my face ducked down, letting my carefully styled loose waves hide my face as the wheels turned inside of my head.

Not just any old, plain bakery, I realized. I had taken him to several regular bakeries before. He had enjoyed the treats, of course, but he didn’t find the places themselves interesting.

And that was what Boomer looked for the most in his eating establishments. He could be such a food snob, I remembered, biting my lip and choking back a giggle that had suddenly made its’ way up my throat.

 _Atmosphere._ They had to offer something else. Familial-like customer treatment. Interesting or unusual knick-knacks on the walls that each told a story. Presentation of the food that made him want to whip out his sketch pad and draw his plate. Or a menu that offered things that were out of the box, different from the same-old, same-old.

The group ahead of me began walking across the street. And before I could decide whether to follow them to continue hiding behind them, or to stay behind, the idea clicked with me so suddenly that I stopped and grabbed onto the telephone pole next to me, as if the force of the idea had almost knocked me over.

Coffee. Boomer _loved_ cafés. A bakery that also sold coffee. That had to be it.

There were several bakeries in town. There were _countless_ cafés in town. But there was only one place that was the combination of a bakery _and_ a café—one that we had both been to together a handful of times, and loved.

Moriah’s Café.

I was only blocks away from there. No longer caring about maintaining a low profile, I leaped, launching 20 feet into the air, and I sped off, ignoring the sounds of shouts and car horns below me.

Flying around multiple bends of buildings, my heart seemingly racing ahead of me, showing me the way, the space of time felt like years but was only seconds. Every move I made felt like slow motion.

And when those seconds passed, and I made my last wild turn—so reckless that Buttercup would’ve been proud of me—I finally spotted the bright purple building below. I had arrived.

I landed so rapidly in the parking lot in front of Moriah’s Café, the ground shook and a few car alarms went off. It was a miracle I hadn’t snapped a heel. My knees wobbling and my head spinning, I took several deep breaths, trying to gather myself as I looked around me, searching for that blue Audi. I didn’t see one, not even any other blue cars.

If he wasn’t here at all, and I had been wrong, I didn’t know what I would do.

Would I give up? Would I just go back to the courthouse? Or would I have the courage to try another day to look for him?

Would I even be able to handle this feeling for longer than I had been feeling it now, this uncertainty and restless, feverish anticipation that made me feel like twenty people were tap dancing inside my stomach? The car alarms wailing around me urged on my anxiety and built it up and up, the soundtrack of this event.

Why did I feel so intensely that this might be my last chance? That this moment was do or die?

I took another deep breath. Held it. Closed my eyes. Then I slowly let it out, opening my eyes again. I forced myself to walk forward toward the front door—bright purple, with a bright rainbow arched across, and a large butterfly painted over it. I pushed the door open, walking into the café.

Once inside, momentarily, I froze right there by the door. I was scared to even look at my surroundings. I knew I would see tall tables, with stool chairs perched at each one, and the front counter, which held windows with many cupcakes sitting behind them, sample ones for each flavor that customers could choose from. They also had scones, cookies, pastries, muffins, ice cream desserts in the warm months, and cakes for special occasions that you had to order special on their website.

Finally, I gathered the courage to walk up to the counter. Thankfully, there was a woman standing behind it, with hair that was styled into a 50’s style flip, but it was as purple as the building we were standing in. Her uniform nametag said ‘Candy’. She was looking at me with held breath just as that janitor man had—immediate recognition and surprise.

I reached the counter. But to my surprise, before I could speak, she spoke to me first. “You’re here for him, aren’t you?”

My stomach dropped. My heart dropped. My pulse skipped entirely too many beats. I swayed on my heels, feeling for a moment like I was going to fall straight over. Finally, I breathed to her, “Him?” Shakily, I added, whispering, “Is he here?” Outside, the car alarms came to a sudden stop.

Almost looking relieved, the woman named Candy smiled at me. Then she shook her head. “Oh, sweetie,” she said to me, “he comes here and waits for you every day. He’s been waiting for you for so long. Weeks now.”

My pulse stuttered again. “He…” I gripped the counter with both hands, taking a quick glance around the café. He wasn’t sitting inside, and there were only a handful of people there, including two teen girls eating a heaping bowl of a Korean shaved ice dessert with ice cream and fresh fruit on top. The two of them were looking at me curiously. I looked back at Candy standing behind the counter, finishing my sentence. “He waits for me? Here?”

Seeing my confusion, Candy jabbed a finger toward the back of the café—a back door. “In the garden,” she said. She smiled again. “Every single day. He’s out there now, painting like he usually does. Just ordered his third iced coffee,” she added with a chuckle. “Sometimes I give him decaf just so he leaves here at the end of the day looking less jittery and nervous. Poor thing.”

I was shaking. I was shaking all over. “Should…” I pointed toward the back door, hesitating. “Do you think I should…?” I trailed off when she began nodding, something like disbelief on her face.

“Um, yes. Yes, you should. One thousand percent,” Candy said to me, then folded her arms and added under her breath, “If I were 20 years younger and wasn’t married…oh, to be young again.”

I was unsteady. Suddenly I cursed my decision to wear high heels this morning before I’d left the house. Suddenly I wished I’d put on my best perfume. I looked down, smoothing my dress, then reached up and smoothed my hair, rearranging it in the reflective surface of the counter window, making sure it wasn’t windblown anymore. I swallowed back the stinging in my throat and the pinpricking in my eyes—I couldn’t cry, not yet. I was terrified, but I wouldn’t cry in the face of this. I would be brave. I straightened up, turning to her again. “Do I look okay?”

Candy looked me up and down, then gave me a thumbs-up. “All good. You’re a vision,” she said to me, winking and leaning a curvy hip against the counter. “Go get ‘im, doll.”

I managed a timid smile this time, nodding. Then, slowly, I walked over to the door leading to the back garden, my shoes clicking against the wood floor.

 _Click, click, click, click._ Step, step, step, step. One, two, three, four.

I reached for the door handle, pulling, opening the back door slowly. Then I stepped outside into the garden.

Moriah’s Café was first known for their mind-blowing cupcakes. They were secondly known for their back garden.

I had last seen it in the fall, but that had been when it was in the process of drifting asleep for the incoming winter. Now that it was summer, the garden was fully awake, and I had stepped into a fairy tale book.

The air was humid and rich with the scent of heady earth. Willow trees surrounded the circular garden, and it was like a tall, lush, green curtain encasing the area. Abundant tall grasses, flowers sprouting in every direction—I had never seen so many rosebushes in my whole life. Lilies, tulips, orchids, peonies. Thick, heavy green plants that shot up from the ground, surrounding benches and covered tables with chairs at them. A babbling, small fountain at the far, right-hand side of the garden, where visitors would go to toss coins into and make wishes.

And at the center of the circle-shaped garden: a white, wooden gazebo. The center of which sat a single table, with two chairs at it. One of the chairs was currently taken.

And there he was. Partially drunken iced coffee on the table in front of him, and a stand with a canvas on it, a portion of the garden landscape partially painted on it.

Immediately, he had sensed me. Because by the time my eyes had found him, Boomer was already staring at me. My pulse, already wild, went into overdrive.

Setting his thin paintbrush down onto the table, he slowly stood from the chair he’d been seated in. But he made no move toward me.

He was beautiful, and I couldn’t believe he was real and in front of me. Tall, sun-bleached hair, sun darkened skin, expressive eyes in a sharp face. Dressed for the weather in long shorts and a light t-shirt, but not sweaty at all, like he hadn’t been out here sitting in the heat for hours. He was a masterpiece. A powerful longing, sweet and painful, banged into my chest and spread throughout my body.

The two of us stood like that, staring across at each other for moments that drew out and felt like years. I read his face—his expression was daunted, unsure. And maybe restrained. And suddenly I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, ambushing him like this.

That woman had told me that he’d been waiting for me. But there was no guarantee he fully remembered me yet—maybe not _that_ way.

He had remembered this place and had known to come here to see me. But what if he just wanted to talk? What if he just wanted answers, as me and my sisters had? What if he wanted to see me instead of Professor to confirm some of his memories of me, and that was all? What if I had jumped to conclusions and gotten my hopes up?

Any number of things could go wrong with a spontaneous meeting like this, with no military-grade barriers between us.

I should have been running away. I should have been escaping while I still had the chance, in case the only way he remembered me was as his sworn childhood enemy. That’s what my logic was screaming at me, and I knew that I should’ve been listening.

But I couldn’t listen. Because my instincts were telling me that I had to do this. That it was important that I was here right now, staring at him. That it was important that I at least tried.

Because nothing would haunt me for the rest of my days greater than the regrets I would have if I never took this risk, this ginormous leap of faith that could either be a train wreck or would without a doubt change my life.

So, I took one more step forward into the terrifying unknown.

And I smiled, and I tried not to let fear overwhelm my voice as I asked him, as I had asked him a thousand times before, “How’s my prince?”

Astonishment spread across Boomer’s face all at once, though I couldn’t tell if it looked more like outrage. I could hear his heartbeat from where I was standing—it skittered. Another agonizing moment pulsed by, and for a millisecond I thought I had made a horrible mistake and I would have to fly away from him and never return.

But then his face softened. The look in his eyes changed—suddenly he was looking at me the way I had forgotten he’d looked at me and the way I wanted him to look at me until the end of time.

And on a sigh, a sigh that sounded like it contained relief the sheer weight of a hundred thousand pounds within it, he replied in a voice so gentle, so achingly familiar, that my eyes immediately welled up with tears. “How’s my princess?”

A sob released from my throat, and I blinked, tears falling down my cheeks and trailing into my smile, and then within seconds, he was right in front of me, wrapping his arms around me as my arms found him back and locked around him. “You waited for me?” I asked between wracking sobs.

And surrounding me was his t-shirt, his scent that reminded me of summertime itself, the sound of his joyful laughter vibrating through me and echoing in my head, him, him, him. “Of course, I did. I told you I’d always be here for you. And you came,” he said through his laughter. “You found me.”

He _had_ said that. And he’d kept his promise once again. I was trying so hard to respond, but my tears kept choking me, and I couldn’t say anything. So, I just clung to him and buried my face in his chest and sobbed and sobbed.

“God, I missed you so much,” he went on. He kept leaning down to kiss the top of my head. I felt every word that he said rattle in his chest. The sound of his voice was most beautiful composition I’d ever heard. “I’ve been so sick over you. I’ve barely slept or eaten. I was so worried you wouldn’t remember me, or this place. I was so worried that you wouldn’t find me. You came. You finally came.”

Sobbing so hard that I was now hiccupping, with my arms around him still, I took my face away from his shirt and came up for air and looked at him. I wanted to say something meaningful, to unscramble my brain and make myself spit out everything I had planned to say to him, but instead, I said between hiccups, “I can’t breathe.”

Boomer smoothed his hands up and down my back. “Easy. Breathe,” he said. Then, taking both of my hands, he began to lead me over to the gazebo. “Here, let’s sit down. Come here.” I let him walk me over to the steps of the fairytale gazebo. I sat unsteadily on the lowest step, and he sat two steps above me. Then, with one gentle hand, he laid my head across his lap. “There. Better?”

I nodded, my breathing already starting to calm. My tears had slowed, but my face was still wet. I knew my makeup had to be totally ruined. Not that I cared, really. Not anymore. “I can’t believe I forgot you,” I said softly, shaking my head and grasping his left knee in my hand.

He brushed my hair back, which had fallen into my face. I was growing it out again, and its’ length was already starting to trail between my shoulder blades. “It’s okay,” he replied. “That’s all over now. Besides, it wasn’t for long.”

“It could’ve never been for too long,” I said. I gripped his knee tighter in my hand. “I don’t know what was wrong with me before…if it was some kind of…glitch in my brain or something. I don’t know. But what matters now is that once I remembered who you truly are to me, it all came back to me.” I turned slightly, looking upward to see him bending down over me, the sunlight touching the outer edges of his hair. “You’re unforgettable,” I said.

Slowly, humbly, the corners of Boomer’s mouth lifted. “Back at you,” he said.

I adjusted again, letting go of his knee and twisting so that my head rested back against his leg, and my view became his face dipped down over me, and the roof of the gazebo, and the blue sky beyond it. The view of dreams. I took a breath to ask something when abruptly, my bra buzzed. “Sorry, hold on,” I told Boomer as he looked down at my chest in bewilderment. I reached down into my bra and pulled out my phone.

“Oh,” he said with a laugh of realization.

“No pockets on this dress,” I explained with a grin, then I unlocked my phone screen.

“Must be handy,” Boomer commented, gesturing to his own chest as if he were talking about a specially made carrying case. Then he blushed and forced his hand back to his side, realizing the accidental innuendo he’d made. It was good to know he was nervous too, and it wasn’t just me.

“Oh, a text,” I said, smoothly changing the subject as I stared at my phone screen, burying a smile. “It’s probably my sisters wondering where I am.”

Sure enough, as I opened the newest text, I read Buttercup’s name there. ‘ **Did u fall in the toilet?** ’ I scoffed aloud at her crass question. “Oh, Buttercup,” I said, scrunching my nose as I began to type up a response.

“Where were you before?” Boomer asked, curious, seemingly recovered.

‘ **i remembered** ’, was my response to Buttercup. I wanted to test the waters, just in case she might have remembered Butch too. I hit _SEND_. “Over at the courthouse, testifying against Princess.” I pointed in the general direction of where I’d come.

Boomer’s eyebrows shot up. “ _The_ Princess? Morbucks? Ex-Queen bee, ex-tormentor-of-everyone Princess, who just got booked?”

I nodded, pursing my lips. “That’s the one.”

“Are you still supposed to be there?” he asked, concerned.

I froze, considering that for a moment. Then, oddly, I giggled. “I have no idea,” I said honestly. Hopefully, I wasn’t in trouble. My phone buzzed.

‘ **Remembered what, u weirdo? Are u still here?** ’, was Buttercup’s response. I sighed, discouraged. “I don’t think Buttercup or Blossom remember yet.” I looked up at him. “Do Butch and Brick remember them, too?”

He nodded. “They both do.” Then he admitted, “The three of us have been playing the waiting game for a while.”

A mix of guilt and relief banged inside me. “I’m gonna tell her. Maybe it’ll help trigger a memory to come back to her.” I typed up a two part response to Buttercup, hoping that it would help, even if just a little bit. “So, where have you been all this time?” I asked him. “I’m curious. Where have you been living?”

He grinned slightly. “Well, thanks to Professor, we haven’t been homeless.”

Sending Buttercup my response, I looked up at Boomer, slack-jawed in surprise. “Really?”

“He convinced Mayor to provide us an apartment,” he said. “It’s a penthouse downtown, only a few blocks away from here, all paid for by the city. Professor also talked to Mayor and Ms. Bellum about our memory situations, so we were given time off to recover, just like you guys. So, when we moved into the apartment, we each found things to do with our time during the day. I’ve been coming here mostly, but sometimes I go to the Art Museum too. Butch is taking a summer class, being trained at a car garage, learning to upgrade old models, and Brick’s been volunteering around the city.”

“Sweetie, that’s great,” I said, smiling and reaching up with one hand to stroke the side of his face. His skin was so soft that it made me want to tear up again. “That’s so great.” I was so happy to hear about the boys’ lives over the past few months. Before I couldn’t fathom what might be happening with them, though I was curious. I was happy that they’d been doing their own things, finding their own ways to recover, just as we had.

“It was okay,” he said. Then he admitted, “It would’ve been better with you there with me. You would’ve loved the pop art exhibit the museum had in late May.” He enclosed my hand on his cheek with his own hand. “I wish we could’ve shared that.”

I kept stroking his cheek with my thumb. He leaned into my touch like a cat, closing his eyes. My heart constricted. “The last time we saw each other,” I started, voice low, “it was weird, wasn’t it?”

Boomer nodded, opening his eyes again, smile fading. “It was,” he replied. Letting go of my hand, he reached down, wrapping his arms around me as he scooted down onto the step just above the one I’d sat on. Then he brought me closer to him, holding me in his lap, placing my legs over his. That was much better. I cupped his face in my hand again, not having to reach as far now.

“You felt like a stranger to me,” I said. “I can’t believe I ever felt that way.”

“I did too,” he said reassuringly. He shook his head, frowning. “Until that day that we saw each other again, I couldn’t remember you…but after that day, I couldn’t get you out of my mind.” He slowly turned his face inward toward my fingers, brushing his lips against them as his gaze locked on mine. “I saw your face every time I closed my eyes. I felt like I was losing it.”

I said nothing, only just reached up with my other hand, played with his hair and let him talk. Hearing his side of this experience was so reassuring—it made me feel less crazy, especially since my own sisters hadn’t remembered yet.

He went on. “The only thing that helped me feel sane was drawing you. So, I started to draw you every day. Just to try to get you out of my head.” He paused. Then he shrugged one shoulder. “Obviously didn’t work. Because shortly after that, I started coming here every day.”

I sat straight up, staring at him. “You drew me?” As far as I’d known, he hadn’t drawn me before. I had begged him to draw a portrait of me a handful of times a while ago, but he hadn’t, saying he didn’t think he could capture me well enough.

Boomer smile at my excitement was tender. “Want to see?” he asked. I nodded, eager, hands dropping to my sides. Boomer leaned to the side, taking out his cell from his back pocket and unlocking the screen. After opening a few things, and then a few swipes, he handed his phone to me with a shy look on his face.

I took the phone gently, looking down at the first drawing and flipping the phone into landscape mode as I gasped. This first one was just my eyes. Large and with irises that were a kaleidoscope of seemingly a million shades of light blue, framed by long eyelashes.

“That was what I couldn’t forget first,” he said quietly. “Your eyes.”

After taking another long few moments to appreciate this one, I slowly swiped to the next one. This one was just a long cascade of blonde, curling, shining and glistening and seemingly moving on the page. My hair.

Quietly, I moved onto the next one. It was a full-body portrait of me sitting on a cloud, legs bent up and my arms wrapped around them, and I wore clothes that were made of clouds, too. My head was leaned on my knees, and my eyes were closed like I was sleeping.

The next one, a head and shoulders portrait. Drawing me was staring at the viewer of the drawing, bewildered and perturbed. Was that how I had looked when I stared at him through the glass wall?

The next, a portrait of me flying up into the air, my hand reaching back to take another hand that stretched out toward me—his hand—so that I could lead him to wherever we were going. This one looked like it had taken him days to complete. Every detail was precise. The stitching on the jeans I wore, every strand of hair that flew out behind me—even the glare from the above sunlight looked like it was real. And that was what made me realize that he had drawn memories of me, too.

There was a portrait of the two of us, taking a selfie as we sat on something that was up high—the Townsville Bridge. I remembered that. Another portrait of me standing in a place that was shadowy, but a wide expanse of stars behind my head. Another portrait from the night of Electric Blue, the image of me lying on his chest as we looked up at a shooting star.

There were more head-and-shoulder portraits. Portraits of my face, surrounded with glossy hair and beautiful eyes, making every kind of expression imaginable. Seeing myself as he saw me, I couldn’t believe it.

“Boomer,” I spoke finally, my voice catching with emotion. “I don’t even know what to say. These are so beautiful.”

I looked up at him finally after seeing the last drawing, and he was watching me, vulnerable. He swallowed hard. “So are you,” he said.

I flushed shyly at his compliment, even though it wasn’t nearly the first time he’d called me beautiful. But it felt like the first time all over again. I handed him his phone back, and he took it, locking the screen again as he returned it to his back pocket.

“So, I need to ask, how did you find me here?” he asked. Then he smiled, clarifying, “I mean, I wanted you to, and of course, I had hoped. Because that’s why I kept coming back every day. But…how did you figure it out? How did you know I would be here?”

I paused, thinking, leaning against his shoulder. “Well, after I remembered you, I just tried to think of all the places you might be. And then I remembered how many times we’d come here. I wasn’t _sure_ you’d be here, but I hoped. And thank god I was right.” Then I thought some more, thinking back to how we’d come together the first time—in high school. “Come to think of it, you’ve always been the one to come to me. So, I had to be the one to come to you this time.” I smiled up at him. “And I couldn’t wait another second to do it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t wait.” He leaned his face over to me, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

“Me, too,” I said, relishing in the press of his lips against my skin. My fingers knotted in the front of his t-shirt, keeping him close to me.

“I was going crazy,” Boomer said darkly. It made me laugh.

“Sorry. I promise it wasn’t on purpose.” I tilted my face up toward him, keeping just enough distance between our faces to tease him. “Forgive me?”

Boomer let out a long breath, the corner of his mouth turning up in a half grin. “I never held it against you. We both did what we needed to as we recovered. I could never be mad at you for something you couldn’t help.” He looked down at my legs, gripping my shin in one of his hands, running it up and down my skin. “I just missed you like crazy. Even before I knew that it was _you_ that I was missing, there was still this whole part of my life that felt empty.”

I watched his hand on my leg. Suddenly I felt the heat outside in a completely different way. “I felt that too,” I said. “The emptiness.” Though I hadn’t known what had caused it, I had stayed constantly busy with my sisters, trying to fill a gap. A gap that I knew hadn’t been there before. I had thought it was just the memories I had lost, and in a way, it was—it was all of my memories of _him_.

“It wasn’t until now that I realized that there’s so much to fill my life with. So many things I’ve missed out on doing because I had been so focused on what I was _supposed_ to be.” He looked up at me again, eyes serious. “I still want to be a superhero. But…I want to be an artist, too.”

A smile burst on my face. “So do it.”

He went on, rambling. “I mean, there’s nothing that says that a guy couldn’t do both, right? No international rules to superhero-dom. It’s always something that I’ve wanted, I was just too afraid to tell people because it wasn’t what was expected of me and because it was the polar opposite of who I was in the past. Before I said that I would be an artist if I were human, but I want it _now_. And nothing says that I would have to lack superpowers to accomplish that _other_ dream.”

“Of course not,” I said. My heart was pounding hard again at the passion that had lit him up from the inside. “So do it!”

“I don’t know what my brothers think. I haven’t told them. They’ve seen all the drawings of you that I’ve made, and all the paintings I’ve made, but they haven’t said anything. Do you think they think that it’s lame? _Is_ it lame that I just want to fly to every place I could think of, see the entire world with you, and just paint _everything_? It’s probably not _cool_ , but so what? I don’t care what they think! I don’t care what anyone thinks! Not my brothers, not the entire freakin’ city of Townsville, not the world. I just wanna be happy and create, is that so bad?”

“Boomer!” I stopped him, planting my hands on either side of his face and squishing his cheeks. He stared at me with wide eyes, coming back down from his ranting fervor. I looked into his eyes. “Do it.”

Now he looked dazed. “Huh?”

“ _Do it_. Be whoever you want. Do whatever you want to do,” I told him. “And I promise to be right there next to you for all of it. Loving you no matter what might happen.”

Boomer’s gaze had zeroed in on mine again, and his face had softened. His hands closed over mine, still on his face. “All I want is you, art, and happiness.”

“I’m already yours.” I closed my eyes, brought my forehead to rest against his. “And you can make whatever beautiful art that you want. So, that only leaves one question.”

“What’s that?” Boomer sounded breathless.

I opened my eyes again. They gazed into his. “Are you happy?”

To my surprise, Boomer laughed, leaning back slightly and adjusting me in his lap, pulling me even closer to him. “Well, let’s see. You flew all the way across downtown to find me. You remembered that we’re desperately in love. And now you’re in my arms.” His look of laughter faded, giving way to a gaze full of intoxicating rapture that immediately made me weak inside and out. “I’m the happiest I could possibly be.”

Letting go of his face, I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Then I guess all that’s left is to see the world together, so that you can paint all of it,” I said. “Where do we start?”

“Hmm.” Boomer pursed his lips together, thinking. His answer came a few moments later. “Milan.”

In delight, I responded, “Italy?”

He nodded, biting his bottom lip with a smile. “I want to see the art at the _Pinacoteca di Brera_ , wander through every single gallery holding your hand.” He leaned in toward me, stealing a kiss on my cheek. He spoke close to my ear. “I want to stand outside of the _Duomo di Milano_ cathedral and paint it. I want to take you to a fancy restaurant and eat fine Italian seafood and mind-blowing pasta.” He kissed my other cheek, this time lingering with his lips against my skin longer. I held my breath. Boomer leaned back again, lifting his eyebrows as he said, “Take you shopping at the _Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II_.”

Oh, God. It was amazing, all of it. I wanted it all.

But most of all, I wanted him. Forever.

Boomer saw the wanting in my eyes because slowly, he leaned, eyes darkening to the deepest, most penetrating blue. “You want it, don’t you?” he asked, voice soft. “With me?”

My throat was dry. I swallowed. “More than anything.”

He leaned even closer. The tip of his nose brushed mine. “My love,” he said, lips teasing delicate against mine, melting me, “for as long as we live, you’ll have it all.”

And then his lips took mine.

The world swirled and my lungs collapsed, and I pulled him closer as our mouths moved and his hand went into my hair. He consumed me, and I consumed him, symphonies rising and falling inside of me, swelling and building and filling my senses.

I kissed Boomer the way I hadn’t even realized I’d been needing to for months now—desperate, I kissed him with all the love I’d always held for him, for the pieces of me that he had hidden inside of him, for the pieces of him that were inside of me.

When we broke apart to catch our breath, a flurry of monarch butterflies—the largest flurry of butterflies I had ever seen in my life, there had to have been hundreds of them—burst through the garden in a sudden explosion of color. I gasped as I stared at them, and Boomer kissed my cheek and the side of my chin, exhaling blissfully against me as he tucked hair behind my ear. The butterflies flew into the willow trees that bordered the garden, settling onto their long strands of leaves and resting there, making the curtains of green dance with orange and black.

Speechless at what we had just beheld, I rested my forehead against Boomer’s again, sighing. “So, when should we go to Milan?” I could hardly contain my excitement as I asked.

The only warning I had was Boomer’s hands tightening on my lower back and in the crook of my knee. “Right now.”

Then he stood up and leaped with all his strength, soaring past the roof of the gazebo and shooting straight up into the sky. I squealed, at first hugging tightly against him, then remembering that _I_ could fly, too.

“Are you crazy?” I asked him, not able to control my laughter as he stalled in the air right above Moriah’s Café. “You want to go _now_? What about your paint supplies?” I pointed down at the gazebo where his canvas, stand, and paints still sat.

He shrugged, beaming. “Candy will bring it in for me, keep it safe for when I come back for it. I’m her favorite regular.” Boomer gave me a funny look then, looking like he had thought of something.

I smiled. “What is it?”

“She’s looking for new bakers, you know.” He nodded at me, a tangle of blond falling into his eyes. “I think you would like working there.”

I glanced down at the purple building, considering. I hadn’t thought about working at a bakery seriously before—at least not before now. It sounded kind of nice. “I’ll think about it,” I said. I reached up, brushing his hair out of his face. “Now, you don’t have to carry me the _whole_ way. If you don’t mind, I’d at least like to fly alongside you.” I lifted out of Boomer’s grasp, lowering myself to levitate beside him. I gave him a teasing nose scrunch. “It’s the twenty-first century. A lady can fly _herself_ places when she wants.”

Boomer took my hand in his, waggling his eyebrows. “Yes, ma’am.” He kissed my hand, and I giggled.

Then we turned toward the horizon, took off, and we escaped. We flew out of Townsville, out of state, and made the journey over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe for our impulsive daytime trip. Miraculously, I didn’t lose my shoes.

We started our new lives together that day. Boomer bought new paint supplies in a hidden-away hole in the wall art store, and we explored Milan together. That was just the first of our many adventures.

We had firmly learned not to take this for granted. Our health, our powers, what we were capable of—and most importantly, our love.

So we dove in, doing all we could _because_ we could.

And we never looked back.

* * *

 

**-Buttercup’s POV-**

“Where did Bubbles go?” Blossom whispered to me.

I looked to the door she had disappeared through, frowning. “I thought she was just going to the bathroom?” The both of us had been sitting here on edge since the scene our sister had caused with her testimony. I don’t think either of us could figure out whether she’d been lying or not—we didn’t want to accidentally let someone overhear our doubt for our own sister, though, so we both had kept our mouths shut until now. We’d only exchanged worried glances.

And it wasn’t that we didn’t trust Bubbles, of course we trusted her—we just couldn’t remember any memories for ourselves that backed up her claims of what had happened that night at Electric Blue. The both of us had looked over at Professor after she’d said it, though, and he hadn’t seemed surprised at all. All of this was so weird, and confusing—I didn’t know what to believe now.

“I thought so too,” Blossom said. Her face was pinched with worry. “It’s been fifteen minutes, why isn’t she back yet?”

“Hold on,” I said, taking out my phone as I made sure no one was looking. Hidden in my lap, I texted Bubbles. ‘ **Did u fall in the toilet?** ’ I sent it, then stealthily hid my phone between my hands flat against my legs. I leaned over to Blossom. “Let’s see if she responds,” I whispered, and she nodded.

We only had to wait one minute before she responded. My phone buzzed, my hands absorbing the sound of the vibration so that no one else could hear. Sneakily, I took a peek at my screen as I opened the message from her. ‘ **I remembered** ,’ was all it said. I frowned, leaning slightly over again, showing the message to Blossom.

“Remembered what?” she whispered back to me. “Did she go somewhere?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know either. I typed, echoing Blossom’s sentiment. ‘ **Remembered what, u weirdo? Are u still here?** ’. I sent it.

“Prosecution, you may call your second witness,” said the judge.

“Prosecution would like to call witness Buttercup Utonium to the stand,” said the prosecution lawyer.

Scrambling, I shoved my phone back into my pocket. Just as I stood, I felt my phone buzz. Cursing mentally that I wouldn’t be able to read Bubbles’ reply until after I stepped off the stand, I sighed and walked over to the stand be sworn in.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Utonium,” the prosecution lawyer said to me after I swore in, whose last name was Jones. I preferred Jonesy. “Thank you for coming here today.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said, feeling the own wryness in my voice. It wasn’t like I had a choice in coming or anything. And if I’d _had_ a choice between coming here and having to see Princess’s mug and staying home to continue my Friday the 13 th movie marathon, I would’ve chosen the one where I wouldn’t have had to put on pants or brush my hair.

“All right, Ms. Utonium,” Jonesy said. “Could you give me an idea of what your past experiences with the defendant were like?”

“Well,” I started, folding my arms. “For one, we were constantly arresting her as kids.”

“Could you elaborate?” Jonesy asked. The way he talked reminded me of Professor.

“Elaborate how?” I asked, frowning. How much more clear could I get?

“Tell us why the defendant would often be arrested by you or your sisters when you were kids,” he explained.

So, put it as laid out as possible. I could do that. “Okay,” I said, unfolding my arms and straightening in my chair. “Well, she was always going after us with something that her daddy bought for her, like an expensive super robot or some other kind of weapon. And citizens would always wind up getting between us and getting hurt, and she didn’t care. Sometimes she would attack the city on purpose, to call us out and force us to pay attention to her. She always wanted us to take her seriously as a villain. She was constantly trying to prove herself.” I nodded in her direction with my head, though I didn’t look at her. “Even now, too, I guess.”

“So, you echo your sister’s earlier sentiments, that Princess Morbucks had always been a villain throughout her childhood years?”

I said, “Sure do, Jonesy.”

He smiled politely. “Don’t call me that, please.”

I smirked. “Sorry,” I said. I’d still think it.

Jonesy went on. “So, if Princess had been a villain as a young child, what changed in middle school? Did she continue her villainous ways when you all got older?”

“Not really,” I said, thinking about this. I hadn’t thought about this in a while. “Come to think of it, I think middle school was around when she started… _embracing_ the heiress life. She began practicing using her popularity and money to manipulate all our schoolmates. I guess it was a different kind of power that she used for a while.”

“Social power?” Jonesy confirmed.

I nodded, pleased that he got what I was trying to get across. “You got me,” I said. “Once she discovered the power of being the queen bee of the school, that seemed to be her focus for the rest of our time growing up. We thought she was done trying to be a super villain.” I shrugged. “Until now.”

“ _Objection!_ ” Princess’s annoying lawyer jumped up from his seat once again. “Your Honor, this witness is only _inferring_ what she believes to be true about my client, seemingly based on nothing.”

Immediately I stood from my seat, glare locked on him. “You calling me a liar?”

The judge pounded her thing that looked like a hammer. “ _Order!_ Sit down, Mr. White. The witness will speak what she believes to be the truth per Mr. Jones’ questions. Wait your turn and be quiet.” White sat down again, looking irritated. The judge turned to me next, saying, “Sit, Ms. Utonium. I’ll handle the interruptions from here.”

I sat again, nodding, but shooting another quick glare at Princess’s lawyer—who was just as snooty as she was, it turned out.

Sighing, the judge gestured to Jonesy. “You may continue.”

Jonesy continued. “So, Ms. Utonium. You said that she became the popular girl at your school in middle school and high school,” he said, looking unaffected by the interruption. “Does that mean that during this time, she was mostly harmless?”

I laughed. “No, for sure not,” I replied bluntly. “She just found subtle ways to be awful.”

“Bubbles said that the accused spread rumors about you after the park incident,” he said. “Did she spread rumors about you three before that, as well?”

“All the time,” I said. “But they were never taken as seriously. After the park thing, it all changed. She’d become this…idol or something. Everyone suddenly believed everything she said because nationwide, the media had validated her. Suddenly she’d become this person for people to look up to, all based on a lie. It was like…watching the majority of our high school join a cult or something. It was the weirdest.”

He responded, “Would you say that, because of her status and money, Princess had influence before—but once the mainstream media had begun giving her widespread attention, her influence grew to gargantuan heights?”

I narrowly avoided snorting at the word ‘gargantuan’, managing to keep a poker face. “Yeah, I would say that,” I said.

“So, would it be so ridiculous to think that she might use this large influence that she’d accumulated over these years to frame all of you in a large way now, to try to compromise your careers?” Jonesy was on a roll. He was a smart guy, I’d give him that.

“No,” I said, impressed. “Actually, it would make a lot of sense.”

“And would it make sense that this sort of influence and expertise in manipulation from her years of practice on her own peers in high school would translate over to the social hierarchy of the villains of Townsville? That she might be able to convince even other villains to do as she asks?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes,” I said. “It would make perfect sense to me.” For the first time since we’d arrived there, I allowed myself to look directly over to Princess. She looked livid. Deliberately, I grinned as she watched. ‘You’re going down,’ I thought.

“No further questions,” Jonesy announced, turning around and walking back over to his table. I shifted in my chair, glancing over at Blossom. She only nodded at me in approval. I grinned back at her.

After a few moments, the judge said, “The defense may have the floor.”

I realized that this meant I would have to talk to that smarmy-faced lawyer that worked for Princess as soon as I looked to see him stand up from his seat. Ugh. Great.

“Ms. Utonium,” White said to me, slinking over to the stand like a snake. “Good afternoon. I apologize for my outburst earlier. I hope we can start this on a good note.”

I raised an eyebrow. _Now_ he was trying to make nice? He could keep it. It was probably just so he would look better in front of the judge and jury, anyway. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” I said, voice flat. I heard a snort, and I turned to see the bailiff concealing a slight smile underneath his hand. At least someone in this courtroom had a sense of humor.

White looked at me, blinking in surprise at my answer, then cleared his throat. “Well, then, all right. Let’s get straight to it, then.”

I raised both eyebrows at him. “Let’s.”

“Ms. Utonium,” White started, “Earlier, you claimed that your high school classmates all rallied against you and defended Princess after the park incident.”

I blinked, then choked out a laugh before I said, “That’s not _exactly_ what I said, really, but okay.”

White turned, his back facing me. “That’s true. You compared it to watching helpless people looking up to a cult leader,” he admitted.

I wondered what his goal was in repeating my own words back to me. “Yeah,” I said warily.

“Yes,” he said back to me. “You said that. And I found it interesting, to say the least.”

I sighed. He was clearly trying to bait me. All right. I’d bite. “And why is that?” I asked, my tone dry.

“Ms. Utonium, tell me,” White paused, turning slightly toward me again. His face had changed—he looked at me now like a predator as he asked me, “When was it exactly that you started to hold such a contempt for humans?”

A few gasps came from the audience. Both my eyebrows shot up my forehead. Was this guy for real? After stopping for a moment to get past my shock, I replied, “Pardon?”

Cruel contentment was all over this snake’s face. “Please answer the question, Ms. Utonium.”

“How about never?” I answered, folding my arms tightly. “Does that answer your question?”

“So, you deny hating humans?” White asked.

My mouth worked for a few moments, my face flushing in anger. I couldn’t believe he was asking me this. “Why would I hate humans?” I countered. “Hell, _how_ could I?”

“Why couldn’t you or your sisters let Princess Morbucks join your team? It was because she’s a human, was it not?”

“Not just that!” I bit out. “It was way more than that! My sister told you that Princess tried to coerce us with her money.”

“But her being a human was a contributing factor in your decision to _not_ let her join. Do you deny that?”

I floundered for a second. “No, but—”

He cut me off. “So you wouldn’t let a human on your team solely because they _don’t_ have powers. Correct?”

Really pissed off now, I burst out, “Yes! Okay?”

White paused for a long moment, suddenly calming as a low murmuring moved through the courtroom. Then the slow, snake-like grin appeared on his face again for a moment, before it disappeared. “I see,” he said, turning his back to me again.

Realizing what he’d just made me admit, and how it must have looked, I scrambled, adding, “But it wasn’t an _exclusion_ thing!”

He turned slightly, looking at me over his shoulder. “Oh?” He had me in the palm of his hand now somehow. I didn’t know _how_ he’d done that, but I hated it.

I hurried ahead, wanting to make myself clear. “We didn’t keep her from joining because she wasn’t like us. I mean, we barely knew her, so that was another thing. And the coercion thing. But it’s more than that. We just…” I trailed off. Something else, some entirely different point, had grabbed me, and I ended up saying, “You don’t know what it’s like.”

White’s eyebrows lifted. “Beg pardon?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” I said again, then finished, “to be like us. To do what we do.” I looked out at the courtroom. “None of you do. You don’t know what it takes. Even _when_ you have super powers.”

I had seemed to capture everyone’s attention now, even White’s. He seemed intrigued. “Go on,” he said.

I had suddenly become very sober. I didn’t feel like mocking or joking around now. “The things we’ve seen. The things we’ve gone through. You don’t get it.” I stared out at all the faces staring at me. “And we do all of it to protect you. Everything we’ve ever done was to protect you.” I looked back at White now. “Do you know the kind of sacrifice that requires? What kind of guts you need to have?” I went on before he could answer. “Not just for fighting villains. The other stuff too. The protecting. Do you know how many freaking suicides we prevent on Townsville Bridge each year?”

A low murmuring passed through the room again. I stared hard at White, forcing him to answer me. Finally, he said, reluctantly, “A lot, I assume?”

I nodded once. “More than you could possibly imagine.” Something nasty, something dark and guilty stirred inside of me. I leaned forward, holding my gaze on him. “And do you know how horrible it feels when one or two slip through the cracks, and we’re too late?”

The room was dead silent. I nodded again. “After what me and my sisters went through over the winter, we finally learned what it was like to suffer as humans do. It’s an experience that I will never be able to forget. Just like I’ll never be able to forget about those times over the years, since I was a _child_ , that I failed saving someone and saw their lives getting taken away from them. And you suggest that my sisters and I hate humans?” Ever so slowly, I shook my head, sitting back against the chair again. “How dare you?”

White stood there for a moment, looking at me with a stunned look on his face. I’d finally knocked him off the mountain of his ego, and I’d surprised him once again. Then he broke his gaze from me and looked down at the floor, beginning a slow pace back and forth in front of me for a few moments before he finally said something. “It seems we’ve gotten far off subject here.” His voice was quiet. “Let’s get back to facts. And the fact is, Princess being a human was a contributing factor to you and your sisters not allowing her to be a part of your team.”

I sighed heavily. Were we really going back to this again? “Okay, yeah,” I admitted, hoping that he would just move on already. “So what?”

“So, this was the catalyst that led to Princess disliking you,” White answered, looking at me again. “Do you blame her for disliking you because of that?”

I shrugged. “No,” I said, voice flat. “Lots of people dislike us. As evidenced by the amount of the public that immediately turned on us given the first opportunity.” I nodded over at Princess again. “Which I’m sure was her plan by manipulating the media in the first place.”

“Do you have _photographic_ _evidence_ of Princess Morbucks doing this so-called manipulation?”

“Well,” I paused, wondering if this were some trick question. “No?” I finished finally. I glanced over at Blossom sitting in the crowd. She looked frustrated. At the prosecution table, Jonesy had his head leaned on one hand, rubbing his temple with the other. Uh-oh. Had I answered wrong?

“ _No!_ ” White cried out suddenly, making me jump and look back at him. A big, triumphant grin was on his face as he turned to the jury box. “No! There is _no_ photographic evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. So, who’s to say that prosecution isn’t simply… _exaggerating_ , to make my client look bad?”

I interjected, amazed that he even just said that, “We don’t have to _make_ her look bad.” My voice rose. “She’s already done that herself. And she’s never given a shit about looking good before now.”

The judge cleared her throat pointedly. “Language, Ms. Utonium,” she said.

This time I had the decency to feel embarrassed for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to me that this wasn’t exactly the right time or place to curse. “Sorry,” I said to her. Then I turned to look at the bewildered faces of the jury. “But my point still stands. Why else would this guy have to do logical somersaults to try to make her look even remotely decent?”

“Onto my next question, Ms. Utonium,” White said hurriedly, looking eager to stop me from going any further in that direction. “If you don’t hate all humans, you do seem to hate Princess in particular. Do you?”

For a moment, I deliberated over whether answering with tact would be better. Then, deciding against it, I answered challengingly, “Yeah. And it’s justified.”

“Justified how?” he asked.

“By her own behavior,” I said. I dared him to twist _that_.

White paused. I just knew he was trying to slither his way around what I’d said, and so I wasn’t surprised when he asked next, “Who else do you hate?”

“I hate all villains,” I said simply. “That’s what Princess is. A villain.”

“That didn’t seem to apply to your teammate then,” White said slowly, beady snake eyes sparkling. “Or should I say, your boyfriend? Where is he, by the way?”

My eyes widened. Ten thousand brick walls crashed down onto my head at once. My heart stopped beating for a good few seconds.

“Objection!” Jonesy cried from the prosecution table. “Your Honor, that is irrelevant. The defense has stooped to using personal attacks against this witness.” I heard him stand, and the courtroom roared with tons of voices at the same time.

I had looked down at my hands. ‘Spitfire.’ At what that slimy snake of a lawyer said, this word had suddenly, weirdly appeared in my mind.

My heart was beating irregularly, and my brain was throbbing. Suddenly I was so upset that a lump had risen in my throat. Why had him saying that to me made me react so strongly, especially if it was a lie? I didn’t have a boyfriend. I wasn’t opposed to some fun, but I wasn’t even the serious dating type. I preferred to be alone. No one deserved to deal with my shit on the daily, and it was already enough that my sisters had to.

‘Spitfire.’ There it was again. What was this word to me? Where had it come from?

But why did I feel like I was about to start crying? And why was there some sort of weird recognition inside of me, like something about what he’d said had made sense?

The courtroom was still loud, and the judge pounded her hammer thing. “Order!” she called. “Order in the courtroom!”

‘Spitfire.’

He’d said teammate first, before the boyfriend thing. And those Rowdyruff dudes…before, Professor had told us that they were our teammates after they stopped being villains. And he didn’t lie about that, did he? Why would Professor have lied to us about that? He had no reason to.

“Mr. White, I agree with the prosecution. What you just said to Ms. Utonium was not only irrelevant to the case, but it was mean-spirited. As I said before, I will not have bullying in my courtroom. Control yourself.”

‘Spitfire.’

Professor had also said that we were romantically involved. And all those pictures existed. Those were proof. Weren’t they? How could all of those candid pictures of us together with them exist on the Internet if it wasn’t true?

But Blossom. Her theory. She said she thought that the pictures were all staged and that it was to make the Rowdyruffs look good to the public. She said it was fake. And she couldn’t have been wrong.

Blossom’s never wrong. She knows practically everything. She was right. She had to be right.

‘Spitfire.’ The word kept swirling in my head, uncontrollable, like a skipping CD playing inside my head over and over and over like rapid gunfire. ‘Spitfire, spitfire, spitfire, spitfire, spitfire, SPITFIRE, SPITFIRE, _SPITFIRE!_ ’

What was spitfire? What did it mean? Where did it come from?

“Ms. Utonium,” the clear voice of the judge broke through the repetitions and spiraling thoughts in my head. “Are you all right?”

My mind finally silenced. I was hunched over, my head buried in my hands, and my cheeks wet. I opened my eyes, looking up at her. She had a look of concern on her face.

“Um,” I said finally, sitting up straight again and quickly wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand before anyone could see that they were wet. That was my answer to her, just ‘um’, because I was pretty sure I wasn’t okay at all. My throat was dry and I felt dizzy. I blurted out, “Could I have some water?”

“Of course.” The judge turned to the bailiff. “Bailiff, some water for our witness please.”

As the bailiff walked over to the wall where there was a box of prepackaged plastic water bottles, I used this short amount of bought time to look over at Blossom with wide eyes. She was already staring at me intensely, worry all over her face. She’d already caught on that something was wrong. I pointed at my own forehead, tapping it with my finger, hoping she would tap in with her sister-telepathy and understand what I was telling her.

Immediately, she turned to Professor and whispered to him, and Professor leaned forward to whisper to Jonesy, who nodded and stood up.

The bailiff had come over to the stand, handing me the bottle of water with a look of sympathy on his face. I took it with appreciation, opening the bottle and taking a few gulps out of it straight away.

“Permission to approach the bench, your Honor,” said Jonesy in a respectful tone, picking up some papers from the table in front of him.

After a moment or two of consideration, the judge answered with a nod, “Permission granted.”

Jonesy walked over to the Judge’s bench, looking over at me with a reassuring glance. I hoped that they were trying to get me out of this. I didn’t know how much more of the White Snake’s questioning I could take.

I set the water bottle down next to my feet. Then, as everyone’s attention was on the judge and Jonesy, who I heard was quietly telling her of my memory issues as he held up the papers he’d brought over, I decided to take my chance. Very quietly, as nonchalantly as I could, I reached back into my back pocket for my phone. Thankful that I’d lowered the brightness of its’ screen earlier, I hid my phone down low by my knees, glancing downward casually as I unlocked it.

My curiosity had gotten to me, and I _had_ to know what Bubbles’ text had said. I had to know right this second where she had gone, and why she wasn’t here now to help us cope with this mess.

I opened the text.

The first part of the message said, ‘ **i left to find him. professor was right. those pictures of us were real. don’t you remember?** ’

Then the second one said, ‘ **the boys remembered us already. butch remembers you.** ’

I froze.

Something in my chest bloomed warm and forceful, spreading through my heart and my brain and my soul.

Bubbles didn’t lie on the stand like we thought she had. She’d just told the truth—the truth we hadn’t remembered. She had remembered what Blossom and I hadn’t. Professor had been right, which meant that Blossom _was_ wrong.

The pictures weren’t staged, they were real.

“There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry. You should have considered this before.”

“I know I should have informed you of this potential problem before now, your Honor, but I was hoping that it wouldn’t become an issue. Please don’t let my witness be humiliated for something that’s out of her control.”

Sounds of the courtroom around me drifted in and out of my awareness as I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I squeezed my eyes shut again as I felt the puzzle pieces slowly, _finally_ , fitting together.

Butch.

 _Butch_.

Spitfire.

Butch remembered me.

… _I_ was Spitfire.

Butch called me Spitfire.

Butch wasn’t just a villain before. He had eventually become my teammate, with his brothers. And he hadn’t just been my teammate.

He was also my boyfriend.

Butch had not just been some villain years ago. He was made to be my counterpart.

He was mine in every possible way. And he always had been.

“I understand the Utonium girls’ difficulties with their memories,” said the judge to Jonesy, snapping me out of my own head. “And I would like to pardon her for that, but you should have told me about this problem sooner.”

I looked over at them and suddenly stood up on my feet. “It’s okay,” I said to her, my voice louder than I had intended. Jonesy, the judge, and White all looked at me in surprise. “I…just remembered something. Something that I was trying to remember before,” I added, trying to clarify as I saw the confusion on their faces. “And there’s something I’d like to say.” I pointed to White. “To him.”

“Of course,” said the judge to me. She turned to Jonesy. “Take a seat, Mr. Jones. Let’s let her talk.”

Reluctantly, after shooting me another glance, Jonesy made his way back over to his table, shrugging at Blossom and Professor and shaking his head.

White—looking supremely pleased to have the floor back again, and not even remotely sorry for the several moments of the mess that he’d caused—turned back to me. “Something you’d like to say, Ms. Utonium?”

“Yeah,” I said to him, sitting and raising my voice again so that everyone would hear. “I do have something to say to you.”

White folded his arms in an amused manner. I couldn’t wait to wipe that look straight off his face. “All right, go ahead,” he said.

“One thing I said earlier _was_ an exaggeration,” I admitted to him plainly. “About hating all villains.”

White nodded, looking over at the jury smugly. “Was it?”

“Yeah. I haven’t hated all villains throughout my whole career. That was an over generalization.” Roaring with sudden exploding courage, it flew from my mouth. “After all, I saved a villain once.”

This time, when he turned back to me again, there was genuine surprise on his face. There we go. I had him right where I wanted him—posed right in place in my mouse trap, ready to be crushed. Two could play this game. “Really?” he asked.

“Really,” I said. “Well, technically, he was an ex-villain. And he had done plenty of things in the past to justify my hating him. But that was the thing. I didn’t actually hate him when I saved him. Not anymore.” I shrugged. “I hated him at first, when we were kids. As we grew up, though, things got complicated. I still disliked him, but things weren’t quite in hatred territory anymore. I had seen him so often, fought him so much, that he had become more like…routine for me. Eventually, I saw battles with him as uninteresting as going to school every day. I fought him because I had to, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I was used to him. He was more of an annoyance than a threat, at least that’s what I had thought. Things had changed between us, but I hadn’t realized how much they had changed until he confessed that he was in love with me.”

The court reacted just as I thought they would: with unanimous shock. Now they all knew exactly who I was talking about. I’d reeled them all in. The flood of memories pulsing through me, all coming back to me at once, I kept going before I could be interrupted.

“Now, a whole bunch of other things happened after that, dramatic teenage things that none of you need to know about,” I said to the room. “But just know that his confession changed everything between us. Permanently. And I fought against it. I fought it so hard that I almost ruined my whole life in the process. I fought it up until the moment that I saved him from a suicide attempt.”

I looked out at all the pale, shocked faces staring up at me. “In his moment of vulnerability and true pain, that was the moment that I finally realized that every idea I had about the Rowdyruffs was wrong. They weren’t indestructible. They weren’t brainless anymore, or heartless. They’d grown into their own people. They weren’t evil. And this person who I used to call my sworn enemy was his own person, and he understood me better than I have ever understood myself.” I paused, heavily, the undeniable truth coming and overwhelming me for a moment. “And that was when I realized that I was in love with him too.”

The courtroom was stirring again. I especially felt the stares of shock coming from Professor, Blossom, and Princess. And White was gaping at me, silent.

I finished. “So, no. I don’t hate all villains, not always. As evidenced by the fact that I fell in love with someone who used to be one. But his case was unique. He matured, he owned up to his past mistakes, and his wants and needs changed. He grew up.” I paused, looking directly over at Princess. “She, however, did not change as she grew up. She just got better at hiding how rotten she is on the inside.” Princess, black-eyed and flushed in the face, scowled back at me.

I turned back to pale-faced White. “And that, _sir_ , is why my hatred is justified. Because I’m a reasonable superhero, and my true hatred is reserved to those who are truly awful and have no worries about being that way.” I leaned back in my seat, smirking at him. “Perhaps you can relate to that.”

Boom.

The pale-faced White swung around, practically running from me. “The defense has no further questions,” he rushed out, retreating to the defense table. The jury was whispering amongst themselves. Princess was staring at her lawyer like she wanted to rip his head off his shoulders. I’d won us another point against them, and she knew it.

Powerpuffs: two. Princess: zero.

I smiled widely. I looked up at the judge, and I could tell she was trying really hard not to grin back at me. “The witness is dismissed from the stand,” she announced in an unbiased voice.

I stood up, grabbed the edge of the box surrounding the stand with one hand and launched myself over the top of it, leaping down over the front of the stand unceremoniously. After my sneakers touched onto the wood floors, I bounced over to the lady who was sitting at—I kid you not—a _typewriter,_ typing down every sentence word-by-word. I’d thought they only did that in the olden days. She looked at me in surprise as I bent down and asked, “Did you get all that?”

She had a hand pressed over her heart, and was slightly leaning away from me. “Yes,” she answered finally, looking at me like I’d grown horns. “I did.”

“Good. Make sure I sound cool,” I said. I clucked my tongue and chucked up two hand-guns at her as I winked.

Then I lightly jogged down the aisle of seats to where Professor and Blossom were also staring at me, but with two entirely different expressions. Professor looked excited and impressed, and Blossom looked horrified and confused. She leaned toward me, her eyes huge the way they get before she launches into a lecture.

“Buttercup,” she said, “Have you lost your _mind_?”

“It’s funny you say that. Because I actually _found_ it!” I nudged Professor, leering. “Get it?”

Realization crossed over his face, and he laughed. “Oh,” he said, putting a hand on his chest, not unlike that typewriter lady did. “And thank goodness you did.”

Blossom looked at him in confusion, then looked back at me in her narrow-eyed way that made me positive that I was in trouble. “Come sit down. What were you thinking, saying all that on the stand? You’re acting crazy!”

I preferred to think of it as acting ‘enlightened’. “Hmm. About that,” I started, leaning in toward her so that I could whisper. “I gotta split. Cover for me, will you? If they ask, I left to feed wide-eyed orphan kittens at the rescue center. You da best, Red!” I reached a hand out and fluffed the top of her hair affectionately, messing it up.

Immediately, before she could even comprehend what I’d said, I turned and ran down the aisle, pushing out of the doors of the courtroom just as I heard Blossom exclaim, “Buttercup!”

I probably could have pretended to go to the bathroom, like Bubbles had done, but Blossom and everyone else would’ve figured out that I was gone anyway. Besides, subtlety wasn’t my style.

I ran through the courthouse, searching for a door, any door except for the front doors. And then a door with an emergency exit sign above it caught my eye. I hadn’t remembered that emergency exits have alarms until after I’d already pushed it open, the alarm ringing down the hallway and cutting through my eardrums.

‘Oh well,’ I thought to myself, cringing as I hurried out the door. ‘Might as well go out with a bang.’

As soon as I was outside of the side of the courthouse, right in the middle of the nicely manicured lawn, in fact, I blasted off into the air.

An explosion of air followed me, along with a loud crack. Immediately following, I heard several car alarms go off at the same time. Whoops. I was still getting used to these new upgraded powers, and now every time I took off flying too fast, I broke the sound barrier.

I had missed flying so much, and for so long, that I couldn’t help myself. I’d had so many bad, recent memories associated with flying that I made it a mission to erase those bad memories every time I flew now. To make better memories to replace the bad ones. Because I’d be damned if I let anything take flying from me again.

Regardless, I pushed through the sky, phasing _through_ the air molecules at certain points and reappearing yards away. That was something I’d found hard to get a hang of, too. Teleporting was wicked, but doing it too much made me start to feel dizzy and lightheaded. I would get used to it, though. Hopefully. But at least I’d have plenty of opportunities to practice, like now.

I knew where he had to be. The moment I knew I had to get out of there, I knew it was to find him. I needed to find him _now_ , or I was going to go crazy.

I was in love with Butch Jojo, the man who years ago made me realize that even though I never _ever_ changed my mind about things, let alone people, he was the sole exception. And now it was time to go find him so that I could tell him.

And I had an idea of where he was—of where he _hopefully_ was. And if I had to check every damn car garage in the city, then so be it.

I landed at the first car garage I ran across. It was a chain one, one that I always muted the commercials on TV for. The garage doors were wide open, and it smelled strongly of gasoline and grease. I marched straight inside, not risking standing there and letting anyone that might stop me come forward.

There was barely anyone inside. Most of the workers were in the isolated part of the building on the side where no doubt the air conditioning was on high, gathered around an ice cooler and drinking water. There was one guy inside the garage itself, slumped in a plastic lawn chair and reading a magazine. He glanced up at me from under his sweaty brow. “Can I help you?”

I backed up a step, shaking my head. “No,” I said quickly. Just then, I noticed that he was reading a gossip magazine. Which me and my sisters were _on the cover of_. I pointed to it, then threw my hands up in exasperation. “Oh, come on!” I exclaimed.

The man looked down at the cover of his magazine to see what I was pointing at. Then, slowly, what I had been waiting for happened—the realization spread over his face, his eyes widening as he looked at me again. “Wait a second,” he said, lifting a hand to point at me in disbelief. “Aren’t you—”

“Yes, yes, it’s me! Ugh, I don’t have time for this!” I burst out in frustration, cutting him off.

I spun on my heel, running back outside, and bursting into the air the next second, speeding away with a crack just as I heard the man in the chair cry out, “Guys, come out, look! A Powerpuff girl!”

As I flew, starting toward the next car garage I could spot, my phone buzzed. I stopped mid-air, levitating there and reaching toward my pocket. Biting back a laugh, I took my phone out to see the enraged text I’d already been expecting to see from Blossom.

‘ **Buttercup, get your ass back here! I mean it! This is incredibly unprofessional!** ’ It said.

Shaking my head with a grin, I closed it and put my phone away again without answering. As tempting as it was to egg on her temper, I was better off just letting her cool off instead of humoring an inevitable half-whispering half-shrieking phone call from her.

Besides, I was busy here. Trying to find the dude of my dreams and all that. I didn’t have time to be yelled at.

I left to the next car garage that I knew of in town, and then the next. Nothing at both, just old sweaty, hairy men dressed in polyester who were complaining about the heat. After one more car garage, and receiving nothing but stares and smirks, I began to feel foolish. What the hell was I doing, running around town like this? There was no guarantee that I would even find him. He could’ve been in Citiesville, for all I knew of him lately.

Finally, I got one last idea. I took off into the air again, and quickly, I arrived at the car garage on the University of Townsville campus. It was my last bet. The guys had gone on leave from their school when they were sick, just like we had.

But maybe, _just maybe_ , he could be back here taking summer classes. It was a long shot, but I had to take it.

As soon as I landed on the ground, maybe twenty feet away from the car garage, I felt it with certainty.

He was here. He was in this one. I could feel it. I listened closely, and there were several heartbeats coming from inside. But there was only one heartbeat that stood out from the rest. A heartbeat that sounded just like mine, inhuman and quick.

I came closer to mouth of the garage, within maybe 8 feet. I intended on going straight inside, just like I had at all the other places, and getting it over with fast.

And that was when I heard his voice.

“Yeah, pass me that? No, not that one. _That_ one over there. Behind that other thing. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, bro.”

I stopped cold. All at once, my heart jumped and did a cartwheel and sank into my stomach. Fuck. It was him. It _was_ him. He was really here.

Suddenly, I was petrified. What the hell was I doing here? Why did I think I could just drop in on him like this, like it was no big deal? It was a _huge_ deal.

My legs stiffened, and my eyes glazed over as I stared in the direction his voice had come from. He was underneath a car, partially hidden, but his long legs were sticking out from it, and he was _right there_.

Now I felt like I shouldn’t have come looking at all—that I should’ve just stayed in that dumb courtroom and stayed there for moral support for Blossom, and to watch Princess get locked up for good.

What was I doing there, at that car garage like it was last fall again? Like I was handing him wrenches as he worked on cars, and as we talked about everything and made jokes and kissed behind the car hoods?

I didn’t belong there with him anymore. Everything was so different now. I didn’t belong with him.

In my sudden fear, I hadn’t noticed that one of the garage workers had spotted me and walked over to where I was standing outside. I didn’t snap out of my daze until he spoke to me. “—thing I can help you with?” he was asking.

I looked at him, startled. He was a short dude with floppy hair and looked nice enough. My gaze snapped back to that long-legged form lying underneath the elevated car, and then back to him. Now he had his eyebrow raised at me expectantly. “Um,” I said. Then I paused, noticing it when the sound of a wrench being dropped came from under the car. I forged on, intent on leaving as quickly as I could. “No…no. I just thought I saw someone I knew. Sorry to bother you.”

Here's the thing: Buttercup Utonium isn’t a quitter. But she for damn sure has some semblance of sense. And my sense was telling me to get the hell out of there.

Before the dude could reply, I spun around on my heel, beginning to walk quickly away. And just as I was about to take off into the air, likely about to break some windows and make car alarms go off again, there came the only thing that could have stopped me in my tracks in that moment.

“Buttercup?” It was his voice. This time directed straight at me.

I literally skidded to a stop, my sneaker soles grinding against the pavement. I stiffened, my heart pounding so hard that I could feel it in my pulse points. I was scared to look back at him, scared at what I would find in his face.

Anger? Hatred? Annoyance?

Finally, I slowly turned, risking a glance. And there he was, crawling out from underneath the car, staring at me with wide eyes like he was looking at a ghost.

We just stared at each other for a few seconds, staying still, and then suddenly he jumped to his feet the rest of the way—subsequently accidentally knocking the floor jack out from underneath the car. In a flash, faster than I could even blink, he whirled around and caught the nearest edge of the car with both hands before it could fall and smash onto the ground.

He gripped the vehicle without any visible struggle, and as he sent an apologetic glance at an older looking dude that had a look of panic on his face, he set the car down on four tires gently. Then, as if remembering I had been standing there, Butch whirled to look at me again. There was a shadow of something like embarrassment on his face.

I had the strangest urge to laugh, but I held it back. Not knowing what else to do, I folded my arms and shrugged at him expectantly. He held up a pointer finger. ‘One minute’. Then he turned walking over to talk to the older guy. The two exchanged a few sentences, and then the old guy seemed to relent, and I heard Butch thank him.

Butch turned back, facing me and wiping his hands on a rag and tossing it on a nearby chair. Slowly, he began to walk toward me. The slowest walk in all of existence.

Was it possible that he actually was moving in slow motion? Because that’s how it felt.

Wide shoulders rolling as he walked the way that they always had, strolling along like he had all the time in the world. Hair as short as mine, only disheveled in all directions like a wild weed. His eyes—dark green and stormy and intense—were locked on mine, sunlight glinting off his eyebrow ring, and I felt my insides and my skin boiling like I was in a pot of hot water.

He was an exquisite menace. Looking at him, I was drunk. And I was screwed.

There was something about him now that I hadn’t noticed—or _realized_ —the last time I had seen him, when I had barely remembered him. He radiated trouble. The kind of trouble that drew you in with everything you had ever wanted and caught you in its’ jaws and then leered as it dared you to try to escape, because it knew you wouldn’t. You would never even try, because you didn’t want to.

Finally, he was in front of me—but he didn’t stop until we were literally toe-to-toe, a breath’s distance from each other.

At his proximity, my breathing had quickened, but I stood my ground, not willing to take a step back and show how vulnerable I felt. I looked straight up into his face as he gazed down at me. He didn’t look menacing at all, though. He seemed to be looking for something in my face. I didn’t know what.

Breaking the unsure silence between us, when he finally spoke to me again, it wasn’t what I had expected. “Come take a walk with me,” he said. Then, without waiting for my response, he turned and walked in the opposite direction of the car garage, not glancing at me to see if I’d follow.

I hung back for a few seconds, weighing all the possible ways this could end. Then, with an annoyed huff, I walked quickly after him to catch up.

I left about two feet between us, but I followed behind him as he kept walking. I could tell he was walking somewhere with purpose—he was leading me somewhere. But I had no idea where. Maybe under normal circumstances, I would’ve asked him where we were going, but I was still reeling from finding him, and from everything that I’d remembered about him. About _us_. So I stayed silent, following from behind him and not being able to say anything.

Instead, I stared at him. He hadn’t been dressed in a polyester uniform like all those old dudes at the other car garages had been wearing. He was dressed casually in a loose dark green t-shirt with a vintage flaming skull logo of The Offspring on it, and loose jean shorts with his worn black Vans. As I looked down at myself again, it occurred to me how accidentally similar our clothes were. Okay, that was weird. What were the odds of that?

After several minutes of this, walking as I remained several wary feet behind him, he finally broke the silence again.

“You know I’m not going to try to hurt you,” he paused, glancing back at me over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow, “right?”

I eyed him incredulously, then scoffed. “As if you could,” I retorted, folding my arms. “If anything, I would take you down instead.”

He cracked a smile, then quickly turned away before I could stare at it. “Noted.”

We continued walking. I cleared my throat. “So, this is weird, right?”

“So weird,” he agreed flatly.

I went on. “I mean, I woke up this morning preparing to give my stupid testimony against Princess in a courtroom, and the next I know, I’m remembering everything about you.”

He paused, looking down at me in alarm. “You only just remembered today?”

“Literally like 40 minutes ago,” I said.

“No lie?” he asked. I shook my head, resisting the sudden odd urge to smile. He nodded slowly in amazement, resuming his pace forward. “This memory loss stuff was some crazy shit.”

“You’re telling me,” I muttered.

Butch turned halfway to me again, still walking. “Wait,” he started, “so you just remembered me 40 minutes ago…while you were in court?”

“While I was up on the stand being questioned. Yup.”

“And then you just…left?”

“Uh-huh.”

“…Are you allowed to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I waited until I had been dismissed, so I don’t think it matters. That’s what Bubbles did too, anyway.”

“Bubbles left the courthouse, too?” he asked, surprised.

“Yeah.” I paused, thinking. Then something occurred to me. “I think…I think she remembered Boomer while she was giving her testimony, too. Weird.”

Butch ‘hmm’ed. Then he asked, “What about Blossom?”

“Dunno, she was supposed to be the last one to be questioned. She’s probably being questioned now, actually. Guess we’ll see what happens.” I chuckled slightly, then sobered immediately, but I didn’t know why.

I felt the urge to be formal with him, even though he wasn’t some stranger to me anymore. I knew who he was now, and what he meant to me. But it still felt weird. It was so weird to wake up in the morning and see someone one way, and then the next second seeing them completely differently.

I now remembered everything about him. I remembered one of the last times I’d seen him—before I had lost my sight when I was sick. He had shaved his head bald, like he’d wanted—because he wanted to stand by me in solidarity after I’d asked Blossom to shave my head, too. Two baldies together.

And from before that, I remembered how he was the only thing holding me together those last months, especially the night we’d snuck out to drink. I’d gotten wasted and freaked out at him and he’d let me, because he’d known I had to get it all out. And then he’d held me as I apologized and cried in his arms.

Just as he’d always had this way of getting under my skin when he wanted to, his voice was also the only one that calmed the raging storms inside of my mind.

I remembered things from further back, from the good days. I remembered how many times he liked to knot the laces on his boots—three times. I remembered how he liked to do push-ups as I sat cross-legged on his back. I remembered how he usually preferred energy drinks, but when he did drink coffee, he liked it black, just like me. I remembered his love for obscure, weird comic books, as well as all the latest underground horror movies that he always made me watch. I remembered the horrible rap music he’d blast in his precious Lambo while I tolerated it in the passenger’s seat, stone-faced. I remembered all the countless arguments we’d had over whether metal bands were superior to punk bands (they are, FYI). I remembered how he looked first thing in the morning, messier hair, hooded eyes, raspy voice. I remembered all the times we’d boned—we did that _a lot_.

I shook my head, forcing myself to stop _that_ train of thought, knowing I couldn’t afford to be more rattled and nervous around him right now than I already was. “So, when did you remember?” I asked, switching the subject back on him.

“A while ago,” he replied.

“A while?”

“Yeah. Weeks ago,” he said. Then he turned to me again, raising an eyebrow. “What took you so long, Spitfire?”

I shook my head, breaking my eyes away from him again when my guts leaped at his use of that nickname. Only he called me that. And I was so glad I remembered it. “I dunno. It’s like my brain just…blocked you out for a while,” I said to him. “I don’t know why.” I didn’t know why it had taken me the longest to remember something—some _one_ —that meant the most to me of all. What kind of sense did that make?

Out of my peripheral, I saw him nod. “You’re here now. You came to me. That’s what matters.”

Hesitantly, I glanced at him without turning my head. He was already looking at me evenly—I’d noticed that he was looking at me a _lot_. Quickly, I looked away from him, staring down at my feet and letting the neon of my sneakers reflected off the sunlight cut into my retinas. “Yeah,” I said, stupidly. The answer fell flat compared to what he’d said. Embarrassed, my cheeks tingled with heat, and I wished I hadn’t said anything at all.

For a minute or two, we continued to walk, and Butch hadn’t said anything else, probably sensing how nervous I was. I hated how obvious it was that he could tell. I hated how he could see straight through me.

Only, I didn’t really hate it. I didn’t hate it at all. I had just forgotten how it felt to be around him—feeling so helpless and exposed like this. He was the only one that could make me feel that way.

Finally, we’d come across a small park. It was the kind without playground equipment, just a bunch of grass and trees and benches and junk. I glanced over at Butch as we arrived, and he continued to walk toward an area where there was a handful of metal benches facing one another in the grass.

When we were standing before them, Butch turned to me. “Take your pick,” he said, gesturing widely to the benches. “Lots of variety here. We have one that’s half in the shade and half out,” he said, pointing to one of them. “Then we have one completely in the tree shade that’s covered in bird shit,” he said, pointing to the one that had turned practically solid white from all the bird poop. I grimaced. He pointed to the next one, “Another half shade one,” he paused, then pointed to the last one, “and then that one in concentrated sunlight which would probably fry the skin off the underside of your thighs.”

Oof. Just at the mention of it, I reached down with both my hands, rubbing the backs of my thighs. “Thanks for that mental picture,” I muttered.

“You’re welcome,” Butch said with a grin. Then he gestured to the benches again. “I’ll let you get first pick.”

Wordlessly, folding my arms again, I made my way over to one of the half-shade benches, sitting gingerly on the shaded side. Butch followed me, sitting directly on the other, sunny end of the bench.

Before Butch could say anything, I asked, “So, why are we here?”

“Just thought it would be a nice place to stop and talk,” he said, shrugging. “Catching up, and everything. Less distractions here. I like to come here and think sometimes.”

Half-joking, I scrunched my nose up. “Ugh, that’s right. You’re one of those outdoorsy types. Always hiking and rock climbing and stuff with Brick.” I liked taking walks, but that was my limit, personally. I liked actual sports that helped get my frustration out, and climbing was so _mild_. Why climb stuff when I could just fly?

A tiny smile tugged at his lips as he turned a sideways glance at me. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

“That’ll be the day,” I remarked. I shook my head and said before I could think twice about it, “Such a human sport.”

I felt the realization hit both of us at the same time. All my good humor swept away, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

The atmosphere had been soured. Then, quietly, Butch replied, “Nothing wrong with that. We would know, wouldn’t we?”

Old discomfort and dread crawled up my spine. I brought my feet up onto the edge of the bench, hiking my knees up and resting my arms around them. “Yeah.” My voice had matched the quiet tone of his. “I guess we would.”

Some quiet passed between us again. Nearby cicadas in the tall grass made noise, keeping the area from feeling too closed in as bad memories threatened to swallow us both. He didn’t say a word but I knew he felt it too, I _knew_ it—I could see muted pain in his eyes as he looked out at the trees.

I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and sighed. “It’s just a memory,” I said out loud unexpectedly. “It can’t hurt you. Just let it pass.” When I slowly opened my eyes again, he was looking at me. “That’s what I do,” I said.

Butch nodded, a glint of appreciation in his eyes. Then he leaned to the side, grabbing something from his pack pants pocket. “This is what I do,” he said as he pulled out a cigarette box, pulling one out and placing it between his lips. He held out the box toward me, offering me one.

Though it was tempting, I shook my head. “No thanks, I quit.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Really, now?” The cig bobbled on his bottom lip as he spoke. “Since when?”

I bit the inside of my cheek again _. I shouldn’t say it. I shouldn’t say it._ “Since I died.” Whoops. I said it.

He stared at me blankly for a few long beats, blinking. Then he removed the unlit cigarette from between his lips, put it back inside the box and closed it, tucking it into the front pocket of his jeans. “Not funny,” he said in a gruff manner. He looked like he was trying to suppress something—maybe a laugh.

I looked away, choking back a grin.

“I’m serious, Buttercup. That wasn’t funny.”

I could feel him staring at me, and that combined with his insistence that my joke wasn’t funny made a choked snort spill out of me. I smacked a hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking with my suppressed laughter.

“You think you’re real cute, huh?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

“Um, no,” I said, immediately not laughing anymore and raising my eyebrows with annoyance. “I’m not cute.” I _hated_ being called cute. He knew that.

He rolled his eyes, though his lips had curved up. “Whatever you say,” he said under his breath.

“I’m _not_.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. A long pause. “But you are, though.”

“Butch!”

Finally, he outright laughed, throwing his head back and slapping his knee. “You’re not, you’re not.” He looked at me, laughter fading as he sobered. He sighed, gazing at me. “God, I missed this.”

I looked at him for a moment. Then, slowly putting the soles of my sneakers back down on the cushy grass, I nodded, becoming shy again suddenly. “Me too,” I admitted. Even if I hadn’t known specifically _what_ I’d been missing before, I had been missing something all this time. And I hadn’t realized until the moment I saw him standing in that garage that he’d been exactly it.

Him. This. All of it.

Suddenly, interrupting our brief silence, Butch asked suddenly, “Hey, wanna know something?”

My eyebrows raised as I regarded him again. “Sure,” I replied, wary.

He sighed in an almost frustrated manner, folding his arms. “You are _impossible_ to get over. Point blank.”

“What?”

“But oh man, did I try to. Did I _ever_ try. Tried everything in the book to continue forgetting you.” He stared at me, staid. “Not possible.”

I looked down at my feet, quieting. “I don’t blame you for wanting to forget.”

“It’s not that I wanted to, Buttercup. I wouldn’t ever _want_ to forget you. It’s just that I thought it was my only option. I didn’t think…I didn’t think you would ever remember me.” I looked up at him. He was smiling bitterly. “And why would you?”

“But I did.” I folded my arms, unintentionally mirroring him. “Of course I did.”

He went on. “I know. But for a while there, I was sure you wouldn’t. And that I would have to go on and make something of my pathetic life without you. I’ve never once lived without you in my life. You know that?” Then he paused, blowing out a breath bitterly. “Except for that one time. When I tried to stay away from you. And if you recall, that didn’t go so well for either of us.”

His words brought back the ache that drenched my memory of those days, and of what Butch had tried to do to himself. Then I swallowed, pushing past the feeling to tell him, “Your life isn’t pathetic, Butch.”

“Of course you would say that,” he said, frowning down at his shoes. “But you weren’t created to destroy. You were created to save.”

“Hey,” I said, my voice softening as I scooted closer to him on the bench tentatively. He still didn’t look at me. “It doesn’t matter what you were made for. What matters is what you’re doing _now._ Who you are _now_.”

“But maybe I’m still figuring that out.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I told him. I took one more scoot toward him. Now I was half in the shade and half out. “Everyone has to figure themselves out. Even humans do.” Then I laughed once, self-depreciatingly. “We’ve just had to do it twice now.”

Finally, Butch’s face lightened up again, almost smiling. Then he turned to look at me again. “You know, even when I didn’t remember you yet…once I saw you behind that glass wall, I couldn’t forget your face. That’s actually why I picked up smoking. I needed some other sort of release to distract me from thinking of you.”

I was staring at him, frozen. “Really?” I asked.

Butch nodded. “Mhm. But that’s just you. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t just… _consumed_ by you. You’ve always been that way. That way of just…wrapping around me. Weaving into my skin. Taking my mind prisoner without even having to do anything.” He shook his head, still gazing at me. “Even just sitting there right now, you’re killin’ me.”

My face was bursting red. I was positive I could fry an egg on my forehead. Man, did I miss having hair I could hide behind. That was the one drawback of having hair this short—everything was showing.

So naturally, with this train of thought lingering in my mind, I decided to lighten the mood with, “So you don’t mind the hair, then?” The question was mostly a joke, but I wanted to know the answer anyway.

Butch chuckled under his breath, and he smiled, almost friendly looking if it weren’t for the wicked tinge to it that made it look wolfish instead. “It’s sexy as hell.”

Something flared inside me. I broke my gaze on him and cleared my throat. I think I was flushed down to my shoulders now. And I knew that he’d noticed it, that he was indulging in my reaction, because he was laughing to himself low in his throat, which just made me redden _more_. Trouble. _Damn_ trouble. “Whatever,” I muttered.

And just when I thought I couldn’t get any more agitated, he said, low and mischievous, “You’re so red. I’ve missed that, too.”

My stomach flipped. I groaned, putting a hand over my face, knowing it wasn’t enough to hide it. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” he asked, innocence personified.

“Stop _flirting_ ,” I said, hating that he made me say it. “There are things that I still have to say to you, and that’s just making me want to jump you. In public.”

He was still staring at me, and I refused to glance over to see what his face looked like. Especially after I had said _that_. “I wouldn’t be opposed to that,” he replied. “Though I know you’re not huge on raunchy PDA. But there _is_ nobody here. Except for us.”

I groaned louder, this time jumping to my feet, standing from the bench. I pointed at him, backing away. “Quit it. I mean it. I need to be serious for a second, and you’re not helping. Stop distracting me.” Now that I was standing away from him, I was in front of him and was seeing his charm full in the face. It made my throat dry, my body burn and made me want to do anything but talk. But we needed to. Because there were things I had to tell him.

Finally, as he always did when he knew playtime was over and it was time to be serious, his face changed, and he looked me, solemn. “Okay. What do you need to tell me?” He patted the bench next to him. “Sit?”

I eyed him suspiciously. “No funny business.”

He grinned again, but this time it was free of mischievousness. “Scout’s honor.”

I rolled my eyes, but my lips pressed together tightly and curled up slightly. I sat next to him on the bench again. Then I took a deep breath, starting. “You know…Blossom told me something about a month ago, when we were starting to regain our memories. Something about starting over.”

“Let me hear it,” Butch said.

“She was telling me about how humans face all sorts of crap,” I said, rubbing the sides of my sneakers against each other. “She reminded me how weak and fragile they are. Like we were. Remember?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I remember.”

“She was saying…” I trailed off, frowning, trying to remember exactly how she’d put it. “She was saying how humans don’t know when they’re going to kick the bucket. And they’re weak, and they don’t have powers. So it’s worse, basically.” I stopped, smacking a hand to my forehead. “Wait. No. I’m screwing this up. It didn’t sound like this when she said it.”

“It’s okay, keep going,” Butch said, sounding amused. “I wanna see where this goes.”

I sighed. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is this: humans don’t let their weakness stop them. They could literally croak any second, but they just…keep going. They live their lives, you know? They go after what they want, and sometimes they fall, but…they get back up again. And they keep going.” I thought of the little girls at the park by our house. How the one that had fallen off the swing kept laughing and playing with her friend, even though she was hurt. I leaned back against the back of the bench, tilting my head all the way back to look up at the sky. Warm blue and cloudless. “And I wanna be like that. I was like that once, when I was a kid. I wasn’t afraid of what I didn’t know.” I turned my head to look at him. “I wanna start over and try to forget about what happened. It’ll be impossible to forget about it completely, but…” My hands clenched into fists. Ready to fight. “I won’t let it stop me from being who I am.”

Butch was silent for a few beats, expression pensive and staid, absorbing what I’d said. Despite messing up in the beginning, I thought it had sounded pretty close to what I meant to say in the end.

Then he looked at me, smiling subtly. “That sounds pretty great to me,” he said to me. Then he nodded slowly. “I wanna do that, too.”

“Then I’ll be there to make sure that you do.” I lifted my legs onto the bench, folding them criss-cross applesauce, turning to face my body toward him completely. “So, it looks like you’re stuck with me. For good.” I folded my arms, daring him to question me. Because from then on, nothing could ever, _would ever_ , take me from his side again. I’d be like one of those face hugging parasites from an alien movie.

“Well, that goes for you too, Spitfire,” Butch told me, leering widely now and raising his eyebrows. “You’re stuck with me, partner in crime.”

I nodded once, pleased. But something in my guts warmed and glowed and grew 10 sizes at what he’d said. Somewhere in me I _knew_ he’d say them, but _hearing_ him say them felt better than what I could put into words. “Good,” I said. “Just like I like it.”

He turned to face me on the bench, too, one leg folded in front of him and the other stretched to the ground. “Besides, you need me. Admit it.”

I laughed then, loudly, arms still folded. “Wow. Careful, your ego is showing. Might wanna cover that back up, unless you want to be arrested for public indecency. As a superhero, I’d be obligated to do it.”

“Come on,” he said, leaning toward me on his fists. Ignoring my joke, he teased, “Who else would wake you up at night to roll you on your side when you start to snore?”

My jaw dropped, and I pitched forward to push his shoulder. “Shut up! I don’t snore _that_ loudly.”

“You do. You _really_ do,” Butch insisted, blank faced to show how much he meant it. Then his smirk came back. “I mean, it’s amusing, and the sight of you sleeping is still a dream, but good _god_ sometimes it’s like you snorted up an entire elephant and it’s screaming to be let free from the inside of your sinuses.”

My cheeks lit on fire again, and I groaned through my clenched teeth, hiding my face with my hand once more. He was the only one that could get underneath my skin like this. In front of everyone else, I was charismatic and awesome, but around him, I was like some blush-y damsel.

He made me vulnerable, but it was more than just that. He made me honest.

Butch laughed. Then I felt his hand on my hand, moving it away from my face. “Come ‘ere. Just teasing.” I glanced at him, and he had scooted closer to me. His shin was touching both my legs, his bare skin burning against mine. Then his hand that had moved my hand flipped, and he smoothed the back of his hand against my hot cheek. “I love your loud snoring. Because when it wakes me up, I get to see how cute you are when you’re asleep.”

My entire body flushed this time. “I’m not cute,” I mumbled, looking away from his soft gaze, and then I grabbed the knot at the bottom of my t-shirt, pulling the fabric away from my skin and fanning myself with the garment. “God, it’s hot out here.” But it wasn’t the weather making me feel that way. It was him.

The back of Butch’s hand remained against my face for a beat, then he turned it over, cupping my cheek. “You’re cute. But you’re also beautiful.” His eyes remained on my face, and I finally met them. All traces of teasing were gone, and now his gaze was fiercely reverent. Nearly worshipful. It made my heart skid to a stop. “You’re beautiful, and I can’t live my life without you.”

My breath heaved. “You won’t,” I said, surging inside. I reached down with my hand, grasping his other hand in mine tightly, fingers weaving together. We both squeezed. Our souls touched.

“Death came for both of us. We still survived it.” Butch leaned his face closer to mine until our foreheads touched together for a moment. Then he leaned back a couple inches, his thumb tracing my cheek, then dragging down to trace my bottom lip, decadent—and as he stared down at it, his eyes darkened.

My veins lit with electricity. “I know,” I said, my voice a little raspy, bottom lip moving against his thumb.

He gently pulled my lip downward, then let it go, watching it and biting down on his own lip. “Not even death could tear us apart,” he said. His eyes locked back with mine. “You’re here. I’m here. Don’t you think we could get through anything?” He tilted his head, the sunlight hit his eyebrow ring, and I was long gone.

He was the most beautiful person I had ever known. There was, nor would there ever be, anybody like him. Mine in every possible way.

My throat was dry again, like the parched grass in the field nearby. I swallowed hard, but it was still dry. “Maybe,” I answered.

He shook his head. Wrong answer. “No, not maybe,” he said, frowning slightly. He let go of my hand, but only to cup the other side of my face with it. I was enclosed in his hands. Possessed. “No matter what gets thrown at us, we get through it together.” He leaned closer to me again, our noses brushing. “Invincible. That’s us.” His eyes were fierce again. Greedy. Drinking me in, just as mine drunk him in.

Mine. Always mine.

Nodding slightly, I replied with a slight grin on my lips. “That’s how we survive. Together.”

Butch inched closer. The heat that radiated from him drenched me, soaked into me deeper than the hot sunlight and humid air. “Nothing can stop us,” he whispered. His hands slipped through the shortness of my hair, fingers spread against my scalp and holding me in place. “Nothing.”

Mine forever.

My breathing heavy, I uttered just one word. “Promise?” My eyelids fluttered—they were closing against my will. My whole being was crying out for him and I needed him.

“Always,” Butch whispered, lips lightly brushing mine as he did.

And then we collided.

Our lips crashed hard, moving against each other as if our lives depended on it—two pairs of lips that had once breathed their last. My hands moved over his chest and his shoulders, squeezing and raking with my nails through his shirt. His hands pulled my hair, fingers curling, and he locked me flush against him as I sat in his lap. My heart’s pace competed with his, racing and racing ahead.

Butch came up for air the same time I did, and he kissed down my chin and across my jaw, nipping my earlobe as I gasped and tugged him closer despite the heat that made both of our skin slick and made our clothes cling to our bodies. His teeth gnawed down my throat and his tongue followed recklessly and I wanted more, _more_. And I would never ever get enough of him for as long as I lived, however long that might be.

“God, I love you, Butch,” I rasped down into his ear, desperate. “With every part of my fucked-up soul that is capable of loving, I love you.”

Butch leaned away from my neck, meeting my face with his again, his eyes cloudy and voracious. “I will love you until my final day, no matter when that’ll be. And even after that. You’ve always had me, Spitfire. You have all of me.”

In that empty park, we sat there and kissed with swollen lips long enough to make up for every moment we had been apart, for all our lost time. Our souls bonded together, our words became permanent. Final.

Now that I had died once, and I’d crawled my way back to him despite everything, I knew without a single doubt within me that what we said to each other on that tiny park bench was true, and that this was for real. And we would hang onto each other, protect each other, see through each other, keep each other out of trouble, and fight the world together for life.

Partners in ass-kickery. Forever.

“Hey!” A teenage stranger’s voice called out to us from afar at some point. “Get a room!”

We broke apart only long enough to both flip the kid the bird as we laughed. And then we were connected again—lost, consumed, in our own bubble.

And I would never have it any other way.

* * *

 

**-Blossom’s POV-**

“Prosecution calls witness Blossom Utonium to the stand.”

Before that sentence snapped me out of it, I’d been totally zoned out, looking at the screen of my phone as I typed a text message to Buttercup.

Just as Bubbles had, Buttercup had stormed outside immediately after her questioning had been completed. Except Buttercup had brazenly taken off, flying away outside with a sonic boom like a fighter jet, which had been impossible _not_ to hear. No one inside the courtroom had been able to figure out what the sound was, or why there was a loud chorus of car alarms that had followed it—except for Professor and I. We had exchanged worried glances with each other.

I had just been typing out my fifth consecutive text message to each of my sisters, demanding to know where they were and insisting that they return to the courthouse immediately—but alas, none of them had earned responses, and it was now my turn to testify against Princess.

I put my phone on top of the handmade kids’ cards I had stowed away in the main compartment of my purse earlier, which I left on the floor in front of my seat, and stood, smoothing my hands down my previously mussed hair as I felt every eye in the room turn to me. I looked at Professor, and he gave me a slight nod. Why weren’t my sisters here? What could’ve been so important that they had to leave me here on my own, with just the Professor to support me? And where could they have possibly been?

I walked into the aisle, taking a deep breath and reaching up to touch the dandelion behind my ear, making sure it was still there, remembering the little boy and the little girl. Remembering that this was to protect them, to protect the whole town. It was my duty.

My feet carried me to the stand, and the bailiff came over to me with his outstretched Bible. I placed my hand on it.

The bailiff sternly asked, “Do you swear to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“Yes,” I said. I wouldn’t hold anything back.

“You may be seated,” he said to me.

I slowly took my seat, my knees feeling a little shaky from the returned nerves. I breathed in, breathed out.

“Thank you for being here, Ms. Utonium,” Mr. Jones said to me politely.

I nodded, forcing a small grin. “My pleasure,” I replied. Unable to help it, my eyes ticked over to where Princess sat, looming far beyond the left shoulder of Mr. Jones like a simmering dragon crouched in her chair. She was looking at me just as I knew she would be—smug, condescending. As if I were a centipede under her shoe. As if I were the one wearing a prison jumpsuit instead of her.

She always had this way of looking at people that made them feel as if they were all beneath her like they were lucky to even be breathing the same oxygen that she was. I wondered how she managed to maintain this air about her even now, considering her circumstances.

“Ms. Utonium,” Mr. Jones began, “what are your past experiences like with the accused?”

Without breaking eye contact with her, I answered with a slight grin on my lips still. “Horrible,” I said.

Princess’s nostrils flared like a bull, her glare deepening.

“I think we’ve all gathered that by now,” Mr. Jones said with a tinge of humor in his voice. A few people in the crowd chuckled under their breath. “But can you elaborate on that, please?”

I sat up straighter in my seat. “Sure, I’d be happy to do that.” I paused, gathering all my thoughts into an organized list. “Well, as my sister Bubbles told you, that exaggerated park story of hers ruined my reputation for a while. To this day, I still have people asking me about an incident that never actually happened. But going even further than that, like my sister Buttercup mentioned, back when we were children, she antagonized and harassed my sisters and me simply because _she_ wanted to become a Powerpuff Girl.”

“Can I stop you there for a second?” Mr. Jones asked me, then turned directly to the jury. “I just want to clarify this for you, ladies and gentleman of the jury; this statement isn’t an accusation. As you recall, the defense themselves even proved this as fact after Bubbles Utonium’s testimony. Just as well, there is numerous actual video evidence of Princess Morbucks herself declaring this to be the reason she hated the Powerpuff Girls. Years later, footage of this disappeared from the media. Why, you may ask? Well, I have legal transcripts provided from these media sources that Mr. Morbucks, Princess’s father, paid these media sources a large sum of money to destroy the footage from their possession, as well as physical copies of the actual checks that were written to them.” Mr. Jones took out a few folders from his briefcase, and he passed them over to the jury. Then he looked over at the judge. “And if you recall, your honor, all of this evidence was approved of prior to today.”

Judge Jackson nodded, her long, numerous braids shifting around her shoulders. “It was. Therefore, I’ll allow it.” I glanced over at Mr. White, and his forehead was gripped in one of his hands. Looked pretty stressed.

Mr. Jones turned back to me. “Please continue, Ms. Utonium.” He flashed me a grin, almost sly in nature. This guy was a _very_ good lawyer. He had saved that evidence this whole time, for just the right moment. I had no doubt that whatever I said, he’d have hard evidence waiting to back it up. Since I was the last witness against her, he was going all in now. This was going to be much easier than I thought.

I continued, detailing all the major incidences of battles between Princess and my sisters and I that I could think of. Along with almost every incidence, Mr. Jones had proof of each one—pictures from witnesses that had never been shown on the media. He passed them out to the jury for them to see for themselves. Some pictures went back to over a decade ago. I was amazed at the breadth of his research.

Finally, Mr. Jones said when I was done, “So, in conclusion, Ms. Utonium: would it be safe to say that you and your sisters know Princess Morbucks better than anyone else in this whole courtroom?”

I nodded. “Yes, it would be safe to say that.”

“With that in mind,” he followed, arching his eyebrow, “in your opinion, is she the opposite of an innocent victim of isolation and bullying that defense is trying to make her out to be, and is in fact, a dangerous, irrational person who has committed the crimes she’s been accused of in this courtroom?”

“Absolutely,” I answered him with a smile.

Mr. Jones shot me a smile back, gave the jury a pointed look, then turned toward the rest of the courtroom and said, “No further questions.”

I was satisfied with the teamwork that Mr. Jones and I had, but now it was time for the part I was dreading: the defense.

“The defense may have the floor,” Judge Jackson announced.

After seeing how relentless Mr. White had been with Buttercup, even going as far as taunting her, I knew it was going to be miserable. I refused to be run over by him, though. I had to hold my own.

Mr. White sauntered up to the stand, giving me a smile that made his rat face squinch up. “Good day, Ms. Blossom Utonium.”

“Hello,” I replied stiffly, not wanting to but doing so anyway.

“Let’s talk about something else for a moment,” Mr. White said to me. “And you don’t have to answer this if you’re not comfortable with it, but I’m sure that after your sisters talked about it, the courtroom has grown curious about it.”

Uh oh. I hoped it wasn’t about what I was dreading.

“The Rowdyruff brothers,” he started. Crap. “As your sister Buttercup said, they were villains until they decided to team up with you. Correct?”

All right. That was innocuous enough. That for sure, I knew, was a fact. “Correct,” I answered, though I was still wary. Where was he going with this?

Mr. White nodded at me, then nodded at the jury. “Okay. We agree on that. So from there, I need to ask something of you.”

I took a deep breath, trying to appear unruffled. “Okay.”

“For you, and your sisters, what was the difference between the Rowdyruff brothers’ redemption and Princess hanging up _her_ own troubled past?” The defense lawyer asked me. “What made the brothers’ change redeemable compared to Princess?”

The question actually wasn’t bad. I had been expecting some ridiculous accusations thrown my way like he had done with Buttercup. Apparently, he’d decided to change his strategy. “Well,” I paused, thinking. “Great question. The Rowdyruff brothers certainly were no angels. And Princess really has never been either. I think that the difference between them lies in their desire to change.”

“Could you elaborate on that?”

“Sure. What I mean is, the Rowdyruffs actively made the decisions to change, to become superheroes, because they _wanted_ to. Whereas Princess,” I made an offhand gesture toward Princess’s direction, where I knew she was staring lasers through me, “simply got bored. Instead of wanting to be good, she just stopped being a villain for a while because she found things that were more important to her for the time being. Which were attention and the spotlight.”

Mr. White stood there for a moment, bringing up a hand to stroke his pointy chin. Then he asked, “But how do you _know_ that Princess didn’t want to be good?”

“Because it was obvious,” I answered simply. “If Princess had wanted to be a good person when she stopped being a villain, bullying her classmates wouldn’t have even been on her radar. But that was what she did.”

“Ms. Blossom Utonium, tell me,” Mr. White walked closer to the stand, folding his arms. Something had changed in his expression. I didn’t like it. “If you and your sisters were so concerned about people being good, then why did your sister Buttercup need to be taken into custody by the Townsville SWAT team for attacking a student?”

Wait. What? I didn’t remember that. Oh no. He’d found a hole in my memory. I couldn’t remember that happening. And why hadn’t he brought that up while he was questioning _Buttercup_ , instead of me? Panicked, I looked over at Mr. Jones.

Immediately, he stood up. “Objection! Your Honor, defense is twisting the facts,” Mr. Jones said on my behalf, to my immense relief. “The student that Buttercup Utonium got into an altercation with was Butch of the Rowdyruff brothers, and it was _before_ reconciliations had taken place between the teams. The defense is purposely twisting what happened to make his client look better.”

Buttercup had fought with Butch at school? And before we had teamed up? Why didn’t I remember?

… _Wait_. I distantly remembered sitting in the waiting room at Townsville Jail with Bubbles and Professor. And Bubbles and I were upset. What were we upset about? Were we upset about Buttercup getting arrested?

No…it was something else. We were upset about something before we’d had to go get Buttercup. What were we upset about?

“Sustained,” Judge Jackson said. She turned to Mr. White, glaring at him. “Watch yourself, Mr. White.”

“I apologize, Your Honor,” Mr. White said. Then he looked directly at me again, smug. He knew he’d hit a chord. So much for changing his strategy. This guy liked to play dirty. “It’s interesting how your sister got into an altercation with the boy she claimed she had fallen in love with. Is that the only difference between the brothers and my client? Romantic interest?”

I froze, stomach squeezing in panic again. How was he still going with this angle? And why did he keep saying that?

Bubbles had said that, and Buttercup had said even more things like that. They had sounded strange to me when I’d heard them, and they confused me. But…why had I immediately assumed that they were lying? Especially if everyone else here had believed them?

“Mr. White,” Judge Jackson thankfully spoke before I could think of a sputtered answer. Her tone was exasperated. “What do the personal, private choices of this witness and her sisters have to do with _your_ client?”

I wanted to believe what my sisters had said, of _course_ I did. Professor had even said that we were romantically involved with the brothers. But it just didn’t make sense.

“I’m getting there, Your Honor. Please let me finish,” Mr. White said. I held back a frustrated sigh. It was no wonder that this man was a defense lawyer. He was stopping at nothing.

The judge sighed. “Kindly get on with it,” she said dryly.

Mr. White jumped right into it. “My client has informed me that she was present at the club Electric Blue the night that you and the Rowdyruff brothers were also in attendance. Does that check out?”

Electric Blue. That rang some bells in my head. I knew from Bubbles’ testimony that it had been the name of the teen club we went to once after our sixteenth birthday. Before, I had remembered only minute details of that night, specifically getting stared at and being asked for my autograph. But I still couldn’t remember much else about it.

I thought harder. Suddenly the image of Princess in a miniskirt, grinding with some guy, appeared in my mind. Immediately, I wished that it hadn’t. I grimaced. “Yes,” I answered. “She was there.”

“She also informed me that you and your sisters were seen with the brothers for a large portion of the night. That seems to coincide with what your sister Bubbles said. Was this true?”

I paused, taking the moment to think again, to remember. This guy was really pushing the limits of details I could make out from that night. It also hadn’t helped that what Bubbles had said about it had muddled my memories of it even more. But I remembered standing in a huddle with my sisters, annoyed, looking at the entrance of the club as someone entered it.

It was them, wasn’t it? The brothers? It had to be them. Who else would we have been so annoyed to see on our night off?

I swallowed. “Yes, I believe it is,” I said. I couldn’t manage to keep the hesitation out of my voice, and I hated that I let it slip.

It didn’t go unnoticed by the lawyer. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you sure about that?”

I nodded, determined not to let him make me look stupid. “Yes, I’m sure.”

He nodded, skeptical. He folded his arms again. “This night was also before your reconciliation, and long before all of you teamed together. Am I right?” The only thing I could do was nod. He went on, “So how exactly did all of you seem so close that night if you were so-called enemies still? And how would it have been possible that, like your sister Bubbles said, they all confessed to having feelings for you, especially if this was _before_ their redemption? Couldn’t they have just been lying to you? Or using you?”

These questions fed into old questions that I had asked myself, once upon a time. And they weren’t recent questions. I had once asked myself these questions a long time ago. Years ago. I felt it. They were familiar.

But they had awakened something—a memory. A memory from when I was a kid. I was fighting Brick, and I was angry.

No—I had already been angry before I’d seen him. So, I went and looked for him. Instigated a fight.

We fought in an alley. There was lots of mocking. I took his hat—his red hat. And I flew away so that he would chase me.

I lead him to an abandoned place. What place was it? A park? No, no. There was…metal. Lots of it. Machinery.

 _A construction site_. Right? It had to be. There was a bulldozer involved. And an anvil. I ran into it. Wait…no. That was something else, some other memory altogether.

Lots of punching, kicking, ducking, blocking. I stumbled. I kicked his face. And then…something horrible. Redness flowing from his face.

Brick bled. He bled a _lot_ , even though he wasn’t supposed to be able to. And then…more red. Red from my ribbon. My ribbon against his face. Against his eye. No… _his eyebrow_. Where the injury was. Where a scar was now.

He had a scar.

He had a scar on his eyebrow.

A scar made by me, that I had intensely regretted, but at the same time had marked a shift in how I looked at him.

A scar which had changed everything.

My heart sprinted, and it was as if the entire planet had shifted on its’ axis as something inside of my brain _clicked_ , and all at once, everything my sisters had said had made sense. Everything in the whole world made sense to me again. I gripped both sides of the chair I was sitting on, feeling as if I was about to fall over.

Oh.

My.

God.

“Ms. Utonium, you don’t have to answer that,” Judge Jackson’s voice broke through my intense thoughts suddenly, where I had become lost, and I jerked to attention to what was happening around me again. “Those questions have nothing to do with Mr. White’s client. Therefore, Mr. White, I’m cutting your questioning short. Please go take a seat. I warned you.” She cut another glare at Mr. White, and he turned away from the stand, wordlessly walking back to his table. Then the judge looked back at me. She was looking at me with pity. “Ms. Utonium, you are excused from the stand.”

Still dazed, I stood up from the stand, making my way back to my seat next to Professor. As I walked past Jones, I shook my head, cheeks burning with shame because I somehow felt like I had failed the case by letting White get the better of me and humiliate me like that. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Mr. Jones.

“Don’t be,” Mr. Jones said to me in a low voice. He looked furious. “He was way out of line.”

I sat next to Professor, knees shaky, and he wrapped an arm around me comfortingly as the courtroom was filled with whispers. I didn’t say anything to him because I didn’t know how to put into words what I’d just remembered up there, which felt so uncontainable within me that I felt like I was going to burst.

Brick’s eyebrow scar.

The _2 nd_ night at the same abandoned construction site with Brick years later, which we’d flown to together, holding hands, the same night we’d accidentally collided at Electric Blue when I’d been trying my best to avoid him.

And most importantly of all, I’d remembered what he’d said to me at the construction site, after my moment of hysteria when I’d believed he’d had an ulterior motive. Words that he’d said after he revealed he’d kept my ribbon all those years as a keepsake. Words that, now that I’d remembered them, I realized they had been imprinted deeply into my mind, always there, but evading me until this very moment.

_‘You heard me, Blossom. I love you.’_

Brick loved me.

I remembered when we’d kissed that night for the first time. I remembered the second time we’d kissed, months and months later, standing in my front yard in a dress and a suit the day of the homecoming dance, _finally_ together. And I remembered the seemingly endless drama and heartbreak in-between those kisses, difficult moments that had permanently shifted our roles in each other’s lives.

But they had changed everything. Just like remembering all of it now had changed everything for me once again. For good.

Because I loved Brick.

As I sat there in silence, simmering in this life-changing revelation of mine, something else was happening. Heated whispers were coming from the defense table at the other end of the courtroom.

Finally, with a shell-shocked expression, Mr. White left the table, rushed over to the judge’s bench, leaning up on his tip toes to whisper something to her. Ms. Jackson regarded whatever he’d said to her for a moment, seeming to mull over something as she gazed over at Princess. After a few moments, she looked back down at Mr. White, nodding.

Mr. White turned, facing the court. “Defense calls Princess Morbucks to the stand.”

Shocked gasps and whispers once again flooded the courtroom. Stunned, I looked over to Mr. Jones, leaning forward toward him and whispering into his ear, “What are they doing? I thought she wasn’t going to speak!”

Mr. Jones only leaned back toward me, murmuring grimly, “That’s what they said before. I guess they just changed their minds.”

My stomach flip-flopped as I watched as Princess, in her prison orange, was chaperoned by two guards over to the stand, where I had just been sitting mere minutes before. I continued to watch her as she was sworn in by the bailiff. I couldn’t read her face—it was carefully blank and serious. But strangely, her smirk was long gone.

Mr. White, after rifling through some papers on top of his table, came strolling over to the stand with a feigned look of ease on his face. He looked at Princess with a nod that was almost indecipherable. Princess nodded back at him.

“So, Ms. Morbucks,” Mr. White started, voice back to its’ loud default volume. “What have you to say about those accusations the Powerpuff Girls made that you were jealous and treated them badly?”

It took Princess a few moments to respond. But when she did respond, she responded with something that no one had been expecting. “…They’re true.”

The courtroom stirred. Even Mr. White seemed caught off guard. “I-I’m sorry?” He stuttered.

“They were right,” Princess said, folding her arms. “I was jealous of them.”

Mr. White was flustered now, and his voice rose in volume again. “But what could you possibly—” He cut himself off, seemingly trying to gain his composure. In a calmer voice, he started again, facing toward the jury. “My client seems to have…been somewhat influenced by these passionate witness testimonies. While those testimonies were, indeed, compelling, they were…How should I put it? Over exaggerated, at best.” Then he turned back to Princess. “After all, Ms. Morbucks, you have had a life that many others could only ever dream of. There would be no reason for you to be jealous of these so-called superheroes.”

“Are you kidding?” Princess interrupted, looking directly at her lawyer with a searing glare. “Of course I was jealous of them. I wanted to _be_ them.”

This setup was convincing, I had to hand it to her. I wondered how many times they had rehearsed this exchange.

Mr. White shook his head, perplexed. There were even beads of sweat on his forehead. “But—”

“Let me tell you a story,” said Princess, cutting him off. She unfolded her arms. “A story I want everyone to hear.” She looked out at the audience, making sure everyone was listening. Everyone was. Just as she always did, for the moment that she spoke, she had them all in the palm of her hand. I had to admit it, if Princess had one talent, it was that. She started. “I still remember the first day I met the Powerpuff Girls. It was my first day at Polky Oaks kindergarten. I didn’t like anything or anyone there, even though they were nice to me. I didn’t want to be there. But then…I saw _them_ in action. The Powerpuffs. I saw them fly and use their powers for the first time, with my own eyes.” She stopped suddenly, looking directly at Mr. White. “Do you remember the first time you saw them? I mean, not on TV. I mean in real life. With your own eyes.”

Her lawyer seemed startled that she’d suddenly asked him that. “Well…” he hesitated, looking at judge Jackson, who shrugged at him. Then he looked back at Princess. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

Princess turned to the jury. “Do all of _you_ remember the first time you saw them?” She paused. Most of them nodded their heads. “It was amazing, right?” She turned away from them, facing the rest of the courtroom again. “I’ll never forget…the wonder. Seeing the things they could do. Things that I _couldn’t_ do. Seeing how much everyone loved them—how everyone _truly_ loved them. For being who they were. For being extraordinary.” She folded her arms again, frowning. “People had only ever been nice to me because I had money. I know I’m not a nice person, and I don’t pretend to be. But I have always wanted what they had. The way they were _worshiped_ because of what they were.” Suddenly, Princess looked directly at me. It took me off guard. Her gaze was strange—it was neither angry nor guilty. It was hungry. “I wanted that.”

The look on her face as she’d stared at me, coupled with the last part of what she’d said, I’d begun to have doubts that this whole story had been their new plan.

“So, you _were_ jealous,” Mr. White cut in again, seeming to sense that he was losing reign of the floor once again. “But that doesn’t mean that you’ve done what this courtroom is accusing you of doing. Childhood jealousy is one thing, but these _crime_ accusations are another completely.” He turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, perhaps my client was jealous. But this jealousy did not give her the desire, nor the ability, to commit these sorts of crimes.”

There was a pause. Then Princess said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Yes, it did.”

Mr. White whirled, eyes as wide as saucers, facing her again. “Pardon?”

“I wanted to be them. I wanted to be them so bad that it made me despise them,” Princess told him matter-of-factly. There was no remorse in her tone, not even any hesitance. “I despised them so much that I wanted them gone.”

Sharp gasps and dropped jaws throughout the room, including mine. I couldn’t contain my surprise at her easy confession to the entire courtroom, which had seemingly come from nowhere. Her lawyer’s face had gone pale. This, obviously, had not been part of their plan at all.

Princess had gone rogue.

She’d just made their entire defense fall apart. In front of the jury, the judge, and everyone.

“Ms. Morbucks, stop right there. Stop.” Panicked, Mr. White held out a hand in her direction, then rushed out, “No further questions. The defense rests.” Though he avoided everyone’s gazes, it was impossible for him to completely hide his shock and upset as he rushed back to his seat.

Shortly afterward, as neutral as possible, though it was probably difficult to maintain, judge Jackson announced, “The prosecution may have the floor.”

Getting up from his seat, Mr. Jones shot me and Professor a glance that I felt said, ‘We got this.’

“Ms. Morbucks, good afternoon.” Mr. Jones started as he approached the stand. Princess didn’t respond, only looked at him with scorn. He went on regardless. “You mentioned just now that you wanted the Powerpuff Girls and Rowdyruff Boys gone. Could you elaborate on that?”

“Yeah,” Princess said, continuing with her direct tone. “I wanted them gone. But I knew I could never take them on myself, especially if I tried to have them killed. I knew no human opponents could ever be threat to them.” She was looking directly at me again. This time pure hatred and coldness gripped me from her eyes. “So, I thought of another way to take them down. I thought that if I could manipulate everyone else into hating them, they would eventually be public enemy number one. And then my hands would be clean.”

“So,” Mr. Jones paused, then asked, as if just to clarify, “you’re admitting to all of the things you’ve been accused of in this courtroom today?”

Princess looked back at Mr. Jones. “Yes. I did it. I did all of it,” she said, point blank. The sound of Mr. White angrily slamming his notes down onto the table echoed.

The entire room was stunned. Why was she admitting to it now suddenly? All of it? After all of the effort that she and her lawyer had stewed up to keep her looking sympathetic enough that she would at least get lighter charges?

Almost as if he had read my mind, Mr. Jones asked her, “Ms. Morbucks, why are you suddenly admitting guilt? Is it a guilty conscience that’s caught up with you?”

Princess paused. She seemed to actually be thinking about it. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But I don’t know if I have one of those. You know, a conscience, or whatever. Doing the things I’ve done has never bothered me. I’ve never lost sleep over it.” She took a deep breath and released it. “But I’m out of money. I have nothing else going for me anymore. My life was over the moment my rotten father left me with nothing. And at least if I had gotten rid of _them_ , I wouldn’t be stuck watching them from afar and hating them.” She paused. “And wanting.” She shot me another hungry look. “But I couldn’t even do that. So, what’s the point in even lying anymore?” She looked back at Mr. Jones. And this time, there was a certain emptiness in her face. Almost like surrender. “I know what I am, and what I’ve done. And I’m done lying about it.”

This moment gave me the strangest feeling. I hadn’t ever, in my whole life, seen Princess like this. It was almost as if it wasn’t even her. I wasn’t sure if it was the defeated slouch of her shoulders, the sallow of her freckled cheeks, or the limpness of her hair, or the way that she looked so small now, even compared to how she’d looked to me when she’d first entered the courtroom.

But seeing her this way made me remember, despite all the ways she had tried to rip everything from us, that she really was human in the end. And for some reason, though I really didn’t know why, it was humbling that someone we had spent so much time scorning wasn’t as indestructible as she had seemed.

In a weird way, seeing her downfall, I was reminded that she was just a person after all—a person with flaws, and with scars, and with the ability to destroy. Just like anyone else.

Just like us.

Soberly, Mr. Jones asked her one final question, “Is there anything else you would like to say, Ms. Morbucks?”

She paused again, thinking. Then, slowly, she shook her head. And that was the end of it.

Mr. Jones turned away from her, looking like he had just won the lottery, though he tried to conceal it. “I rest my case.”

“Ms. Morbucks,” said the judge, “You are dismissed from the stand.”

Princess left the stand with both guards, and immediately afterward, the jury was dismissed to the jury room, where they deliberated for the next fifteen minutes. Everyone in the courtroom anxiously waited, everyone on the edge of their seats. I held Professor’s hand, trying to keep calm. Princess had basically just handed us the entire case. She’d wanted to go down, and she did everything to make that happen.

The jury returned, sitting back in their seats. It was time.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Judge Jackson asked the jury.

The representative of the jury stood, an older woman with a cheetah print blouse and an orange fascinator on her head. “We have, your honor.”

“What say you?” asked the judge. The entire courtroom collectively held its breath.

“We, the jury, find the defendant, Princess Morbucks, guilty on all charges.”

Every reaction happened at the same time—some gasps, some sounds of relief, some of disbelief, some of joy. I sat there in shock as Professor turned and grabbed my arm. Mr. Jones turned to look at us in quiet triumph.

Faintly, I noticed Mr. White storming out of the courtroom in humiliation and fury with his briefcase in hand, yanking open the back doors and disappearing through them.

The honorable Judge Maisy Jackson listed off what Princess had been charged with—2 counts of constructive possession of an illegal substance, 4 counts of attempt to destroy the city, 6 counts of conspiring murder.

40 years in prison, without bail. Princess would be 60 years old the day she was finally released.

“The court is dismissed,” Judge Jackson announced, and as everyone stood from their seats, Princess was taken away. Instead of weeping, like I’d expected, she was utterly grave. It was as if she’d already accepted that this would happen. As she left through the doors, she stared at me.

I stared back. Neither of us broke our gazes until the double doors shut between us.

After the doors shut, I turned, looking over the courtroom around me, silent.

Sometimes, after going through low after low, the lows are all someone comes to expect from the universe anymore.

But sometimes—other times—the universe has this way of knowing when the bad things get to be too much. Sometimes the universe takes a look at someone and decides to give them a break, to throw more than one good thing their way at once. And the good things stack up together, almost overwhelmingly—like a miracle.

When this so rarely happens, you can’t help but feel how lucky you are to even exist. You can’t help but feel like you just may be the luckiest being in the entire solar system to get to experience this miracle of events.

In that moment, this is exactly how I felt. An overwhelming sense of justice and stars finally aligning the way they were supposed to, in a way that I had never thought would happen again.

In this moment, I thought back to being in that hospital bed, my life shredded apart molecule by molecule by the black hole that had consumed everything. That time when I had stopped fighting for my life and for what I loved because I couldn’t anymore—because I’d lost my strength and my will. Because I’d lost everything.

That time, it seemed that I would never witness anything noble, or happy, or beautiful ever again and that the universe had nothing good left to offer me.

And yet here I was. The universe had sure proved me wrong.

In this moment, I knew that there would always be something left to fight for. There was so much to gain from fighting for goodness and never giving up. And it would always, _always_ be worth it.

This was why I existed. And so, as long as I continued to exist on this planet, I would never give up the fight for this feeling of good and of indisputable virtue.

Never.

A pair of arms closed around me, and I snapped out of my daze. Professor hugged me tightly, then pulled back and bent to look at me. “You all did it,” he told me, squeezing my shoulders in his hands. “I knew you could.”

Smiling humbly, since it hadn’t been mostly me anyway, I shrugged. I reached up, touching his hands with my hands. “Professor, I need to go,” I said with urgency.

Professor’s eyebrows rose. “How come?” Then, he glanced at my side, and something occurred to him. “Come to think of it, where are your sisters?” He looked around us, bewildered, realizing they both hadn’t come back yet.

I now knew exactly where they had gone. Because it was exactly why I needed to leave now. “No time to explain,” I squeezed his hands with mine. “Just trust me when I say that I’ve just remembered some very important memories and I need to set some things right. Immediately.”

He looked at me for a moment, blinking. Then understanding spread across his face, and then relief. “Go do what you need to do,” he said, pulling his hands away from mine.

At his immediate support, my face burst into a smile at him. I picked up my purse, taking out my cell and gripping it in one of my hands, then I pushed the bag into his hands. “Could you take this? I won’t be needing it.” I began to back away, but then, remembering my manners, I looked around Professor at Mr. Jones. I stuck my hand out toward him. He looked at me with surprise. “Congratulations. It was a pleasure working with you,” I said to him, and I meant it.

Mr. Jones grinned, taking my hand and shaking it. “Likewise, Ms. Utonium. Thank you once again for your help. It was irreplaceable.”

I nodded again, grinning as I shook his hand, then took mine back. Then I saluted at Dad, briskly spinning around and running down the aisle and pushing out of the courtroom doors.

I rushed toward the courthouse doors next, barely restraining the craving to fly and shove through the crowds in my hurry. Eventually, though I had made it to the front doors of the courthouse. With both hands, I yanked inward on both ornate door handles. I stepped outside.

Instantly, flashing lights and shouts surrounded me.

“Blossom!”

“Over here! Blossom!”

“Blossom, what are your thoughts on Princess’s sentencing?”

“Blossom, how do you feel about Princess going to prison for good?”

“Blossom, a moment of your time, please!”

“Blossom, where are your sisters?”

I marched right through that crowd, this time having no security guards surrounding me and not even needing them. Head held high, shoulders back, and eyes focused with no sunglass barrier this time, I walked through those reporters. As if sensing my fire and determination, they made room for me, parted straight down the middle, like the Red Sea.

No one even touched me.

I had faced the last remaining dragon of my past in that courtroom. This dragon had laid down in defeat, in a way I would never have even imagined—the dragon had become a mere earthworm. Slain, conquered. Hopefully for a long time.

On a mission, nothing else could stand in my way.  And so, when I broke from the crowd, blasting up and straight into the sky with a booming crack that Buttercup would be proud of, I left the dragon of my past and the shouts of the reporters behind me. And I never looked back.

Now it was time for this last personal battle, this thing I _had_ to do before I did anything else, or else every bit of my world that had just returned to me would be lost.

I needed to find him.

Because if losing everything once made me realize anything, it was to do what you need to do before it’s too late. Before you can’t do anything ever again, forever.

And I would not lose him twice.

Early afternoon, the sun was directly overhead, and relentless. The heat was unimaginable—the hottest it had ever felt for this entire heatwave. And in that moment, when I realized just how _bright and hot_ it was, of course only _then_ would I realize that I had forgotten my sunglasses.

Pushing through the scorching sky as best as I could, my first stop was the café—our café. The café which was the perfect distance between both of our colleges, which was my favorite place to study, had the best raspberry cappuccino, and which was never too empty nor too busy.

I burst through the door, the bell above my head ringing.

Small and humble, my café was just as it had always been. Nothing at all had changed since January—the wood floors, the acoustic music playing over ceiling speakers, and the scent of roasted coffee beans that felt like home to me. Instead of the welcoming heat that had warmed this place during the fall and winter months, there was now a pleasant coolness to the air, a sweet relief after being outside. The owner, with his round glasses perched on the tip of his nose, looked at me from across the counter, bewildered at my sudden, noisy entrance, but recognizing.

I rushed over to the counter. “Has Brick been here?” I asked, not beating around the bush. I knew he’d know exactly who I meant. Brick and I had been here more times than I could count, individually and together, and he knew all his regulars.

The owner smiled at me sympathetically and said in his soft voice, “He has been here, but not today.” He shrugged, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

I inhaled deeply, nodding in disappointment. “Thanks anyway,” I told him, then I quickly walked back through the door, evading the stares of the few patrons inside.

That was okay. Just a setback. I had the right idea, looking at places he’d been at. I couldn’t get discouraged. I just had to keep looking.

I took off into the air again, heading straight for the nearby University of Townsville campus.

When I landed at the near-deserted campus, for a moment, I questioned what I was even doing there. It was _summer_. And obviously, he still didn’t live on campus. He and his brothers had moved out before Christmas break.

But maybe he was taking some summer classes or two. I couldn’t rule it out. I had to give it a try. I went to the main office on campus and finding the registration office, I asked if Brick Jojo was currently enrolled in any summer classes.

“Sorry, I don’t see that name on the lists of any of our summer courses,” said the nice woman in the office to me, looking up from her desktop screen. “Are you sure that’s the right name you’re looking for?”

I restrained a sigh. “I’m sure. Thank you for looking anyway, I appreciate it.” It had been worth a shot. But now I had to figure out where else to go.

I left the building, stepping out into the heat again. I walked out into the courtyard, and after seeing a nearby guy sitting on the grass with his guitar jump up when he saw me, screaming, “Holy crap!” seemingly in recognition, I immediately lifted into the air again, taking off before any further fuss could kick up.

Where else, where else? I thought of his favorite independent film theater downtown where he liked to see the latest hyped film in the movie buff world, and as soon as I did, I took off in the direction of it.

I arrived there quickly, and when I landed, my eyes caught on a sign on the front doors of the seemingly empty building. ‘ _CLOSED FOR REMODELING. RE-OPENING COMING LATE AUGUST.’_ , it said.

I stood back on my heels, folding my arms in dissatisfaction and rolling my eyes. “You’ve got to be _kidding_ me,” I said under my breath. I’d thought that this had been a brilliant idea, too—but nope. Another dead end.

Taking off into the sky again, I paused, hovering mid-air to think. There had to be somewhere else I could look. I was annoyed at how quickly I had run out of ideas.

There was only one other idea I had, one that was far more hard work, but one that I knew would probably get me results quicker. I had to be bold. So if I had to work harder, then so be it. I’d do anything.

Flying slowly back down to the ground again, I touched down onto a downtown Townsville sidewalk, one that was busy. It was time to get to work.

The first person I saw passing by that looked me in the face, I went directly over to them. A woman holding the hand of a complaining child. “Hi, excuse me, have you seen Brick Jojo?” I asked her immediately. She’d paused, looking at me in surprise, but she frowned at my question, not understanding. “He’s tall, has red hair and red eyes? Looks kinda like me?” I expanded, hopeful. “He’s a superhero?”

She was shaking her head, starting to move away from me, her child dragging her away by the hand. “Sorry, I haven’t seen him.” Then she continued leaving, scolding her kid.

I nodded, accepting, moving onto the next person that passed by me, a tall gangly teenage girl that towered over me. “Excuse me, hi, could you help me?”

She looked directly at me, startled, but then smiled slightly. “Oh, sure. You’re a Powerpuff girl, right? Blossom?”

I managed to smile back, relieved that she knew me by name. That would make this easier. “Yeah, I am. I was wondering if you’ve seen the Rowdyruff boy that looks like me around here today? You know, Brick?”

“Oh, yeah, Brick!” she responded, and my heart soared. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, I haven’t seen him today. But I saw him last week, at the animal shelter, when I was volunteering there. He was volunteering too.”

I was disheartened, but also somewhat encouraged by this piece of information. He had been volunteering somewhere. Maybe he was volunteering somewhere today. “Thanks, that actually helps me a lot.”

She looked relieved. “Good! I’m glad I could help.” I started to leave, but then she interjected, making me stop again, “Hey, wait! Can I ask you something?”

I turned back toward her, surprised that she had something to ask me in return. “Oh. Sure, what is it?”

She bent toward me, whispering to me behind her hand, “Are you dating him? You are, right?” She was beaming, metal braces full on display. So enthusiastic that it was adorable.

Unable to help it, I laughed. Then I told her easily, finding no reason to lie to someone so sweet and innocent, “We…were. And then we…took a break.” I leaned up toward her, whispering back behind my own hand, “That’s why I’m trying to find him. To get back together with him.”

She gasped in delight, clapping her hands together. “Then you’d better get out of here!” She said excitedly.

“I know,” I said, nodding and laughing as I turned away again to leave. “I’m gonna go!”

“Good luck finding him!” She called after me as I walked away, waving. “I’m rooting for you!”

On my phone, I gave each animal shelter in the city a call. All of them told me that there was no Brick volunteering with any of them today. Disappointed, I continued the asking approach. I stopped a few more people after that, asking if they’d seen a Rowdyruff volunteering in the area. Most people said no, and a few of them ignored me altogether and only kept walking with not even a glance in my direction. I supposed even being a superhero didn’t make me exempt from rude people.

Beginning to get frustrated, I stopped an older man who was looking at me in concern. I must have looked crazy. “Excuse me, could you help me?”

He paused, eyebrows raised, then he said with a laugh, “You need help? Aren’t you normally the one helping folks?”

The irony hadn’t been lost on me, either. I grinned, but quickly, I asked, “Have you seen the Rowdyruff that looks like me around this area? Or have you seen him at all?”

He frowned. “Rowdy what?”

He didn’t know their team name. Crud. This would be difficult. “The superhero. He’s like me,” I tried to clarify. He only shook his head, still not getting it. Suddenly, an idea came to me—my phone. A picture. “Just a second,” I told him.

I snatched my phone from my skirt pocket, unlocking it and going straight to my photo gallery, which I’d refused to look through for months because I was scared of what I might find in it, scared which memories the photos might trigger.

Swiping frantically, stomach panging at some of the images I saw, I stopped only when I found the first picture of Brick where I could clearly see his face. I pinched, zooming in on him, then I held it out in front of me, showing him the photo. “This guy,” I said. “His name is Brick. Have you seen him?”

The man’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh, yeah. That fellow. You looking for him?”

“Yes! You’ve seen him?” I asked, lighting up too.

The man grinned, wide and toothy. “Yeah, on the news!” His grin faded slightly when he saw my face fall. He asked, “Is that what you mean?”

Disheartened, my hand holding my phone out lowered. “No. I mean, have you seen him around here? Downtown? Like, today?”

“Oh, in person you meant.” He shook his head. I was beginning to resent that gesture. “No, no I haven’t. Sorry.”

Quickly, I left, but not without saying to him first, “Thanks anyway.”

I took to showing the picture to more people passing me on the sidewalks. I even moved to different areas, with different crowds. Each time someone shook their head or said no, which was every single time that I had asked somebody, I tried my best to swallow the lump in my throat and push down the panic. This would work. It _had_ to work. I would find him.

I was working my way deeper and deeper into downtown, where the city was loudest and hottest and the most crowded, and I was starting to lose heart.

And just as I thought that maybe it was time to hang up the towel for today, go home and rest and pick this search back up tomorrow when I hadn’t had the longest, craziest day in history, I saw it.

A guy slightly older than me, holding a toddler on his hip with one arm. In his free hand, a clear cup with a frozen treat in it—a cup that said ‘Pop’s Ice Cream & Gelato’ on it.

Immediately, my mind spun. Memories of looking at gelato through a glass window, Brick telling me I could have whichever one I wanted, and black flowing out of my nose.

But Pop’s was multiple blocks away from here. Much further than most people would be willing to walk in this kind of heat, especially humans. Maybe he’d taken a cab here. Or maybe—

I walked over to him before I could stop myself. “Excuse me,” I said to him as I approached, pointing at his Italian ice and playing dumb. “Where did you get that?”

The guy, thankfully, was friendly. “Oh, I just came from the town square. There’s some sort of festival going on down there. There was a tent set up there, by some local ice cream shop. They were giving out free cups of it for charity.” Then he paused, looking at me closer, lowering his sunglasses to get a better look. “Wait a second. You’re a Powerpuff girl, right?” Before I could give an exasperated response to this same question I’d received at least 50 times the past hour, he commented, “I think one of the volunteers at the tent was your teammate.”

The words had an effect of thunder clapping and echoing inside me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, hands trembling, then I turned on my heel and shouted, “Thank you so much!” Being careful so as to not knock him over by suddenly taking off, I gently levitated up around thirty feet into the air, and then I sped off in the direction of town square—mere blocks away.

I did it. I found him. I was _so close_. I was flying so fast to get there I phased through the air, teleported several yards, and when I came out on the other side I had arrived.

There certainly was a festival happening here. There were multiple tents and stands set up, and lots of people.

Catching sight of the Pop’s tent immediately, my stomach sunk slightly at the sight of the huge crowd around it. There were so many people waiting for their turn to get their frozen treats, at least a hundred of them. I remained in the air, taking advantage of the height I was at to stare inside of the tent, looking at the several volunteers on the inside. They were all scrambling around, scooping up frosty treats and putting them in cups with plastic spoons, frantically handing them out to the demanding, sweaty people.

One guy was even apologizing to the unforgiving crowd through a megaphone. “We’re sorry, but we can no longer provide free Italian ice, the machine is broken!”

But I didn’t see him inside the tent, among all the chaos. Where was he? Slowly, I lowered my feet to the ground, eyeing the crowd. Could he be among them?

Steeling myself up for being crowded for the second time today, I pushed my feet toward the massive gathering of people. I looked for an open space where I could possibly speak to one of the volunteers inside the tent, ask if Brick had left, but the body-to-body space was impossible to move through. And when I tried, a girl shoved me back with her sharp elbow without looking and yelled, “Wait in line like everyone else!”

I almost snapped back that there _was_ no line to speak of, only unadulterated anarchy, but I bit my tongue and stepped back. It was no use. He wasn’t in there. I’d have seen him already if he was, and there was no use risking getting maimed to try to penetrate this madness.

So I turned, walking away from the crowd and looking out past the concrete block across at the other side of town square that _wasn’t_ madness, a small park. It was mostly just a field of grass full of people sitting on picnic blankets and enjoying their cold treats peacefully, listening to an acoustic band that was playing on the other side of the park on a small stage.

And then. Red.

A red shirt. Among the sea of peaceful picnickers, leaning against a shady tree.

I stopped walking. I stopped moving, period. I stopped breathing.

It was him.

Brick was across the town square, leaning against that tree, back turned to me.

And then, when he saw a pregnant woman walking close by, he stood away from the tree, offering her his shady spot. As she thanked him, he grinned, moving to stand in the sun instead, drinking from a nearly empty plastic water bottle. Then he turned around, the front of him almost facing my direction. His feet splayed as he looked up at the sky, squinting, hand reaching up to block the sun, leaving a hand-shaped shadow across his face.

I couldn’t breathe.

It was him. It was really him.

I stared at him, physically unable to look away, and he was all I saw. Dizzy, I was breathing hard, and I tried to force myself to slow down. The noisy square had faded away into nothing.

I was seeing all of the things that I’d forgotten. All of the precious days and nights I’d spent with him. His scar that slashed through his eyebrow, standing out to me like a beacon. His tangled rusty hair gleaming in the sun, his broad chest and wide shoulders. His kisses and his touch and his soul and his beautiful, brilliant mind.

I was stuck in my spot, terrified to move. What if he didn’t remember me still? What would I do if he didn’t remember me?

If he _never_ remembered me?

Or worse—what if he remembered me, and he didn’t love me anymore? What if he _hated_ me? I could never handle it. I would implode. I would die.

Suddenly, making my breath catch again in my chest, he froze, hand dropping downward suddenly.

He began to turn in my direction, very slowly at first—and then as if he had _felt_ me standing there, had felt my stare, he looked directly at me. Our gazes locked. The air shook. Buildings crumbled. Planets spun free of their orbits, shooting off into deep space. Time shriveled and then ceased to exist. Moments passed when I considered, believed even, that I should never ever so much as move again—to be caught in this moment of wild terror forever.

And then he smiled at me.

My heart swelled, exploded and thundered like supernova explosions in my chest.

I gazed at him, searching his gorgeous ruby eyes. He remembered, and he recognized me. I knew he did, I _knew_ , because he was looking at me the same way that I was looking at him—like the Earth itself was shaking and cracking apart beneath our feet, threatening to swallow us both up whole. Even though it already had.

And we’d still found our way back to each other. Because nothing, not even our whole worlds ending, _ever_ tore us apart for long.

He took a single step toward me, and that was all it took.

I ran.

I ran to him, ran desperately across the square like the concrete ground couldn’t hold me, and then before I knew it, without controlling it, I was flying—the sheer bliss of seeing him again and _knowing_ him had made me break gravity’s very hold on my body and lift into the air without my control.

I flung myself toward him through the air, accelerating, and I soared, not caring who was watching. Brick’s arms opened up, beckoning me, gorgeous smile growing impossibly huge, illuminating like the sun.

The distance between us shrunk, inch by aching inch, and then it was gone. I slammed into him full speed, and he caught me easily in his arms, lifting into the air and spinning me around as I began to cry and told him, “I love you so much. I love you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

At his arms around me, familiar and with a warmness that made me feel as if I was going to melt, my soul sang. _I’ve found you again_ , it said. _There you are. I’ve missed you. I’ve been searching for you. Here you are. I’ve found you._

Every inch of loss and emptiness within me was gone and replaced with this glowing truth that now overflowed, spilling over, and I was so _full_ , so certain, that I knew this had been exactly what I was looking so anxiously for these past months.

My person.

After Brick set us both down on our feet, I clung to him tightly, and I sobbed as I looked up into his face. My breath was coming in heaves. “I’m so sorry I forgot you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“I know, Bloss. Shh.” Brick grasped my head, taking it into his hands, and he kissed my forehead, my tearstained cheeks, my nose, as he always had. Then he wrapped his arms around me again, tightly grasping my trembling, unsteady frame. “Blossom. My beautiful love. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

My hysterical sobs into his shirt only increased at his tenderness and palpable adoration. My hands clenched at the material of his t-shirt, burying my face in it, and I felt his heart through his chest, racing just the way mine was, the way only our hearts did.

How could I have ever forgotten this?

“Shh, baby,” he whispered. “You’re home now. We both are.” He placed his hand at the back of my head, holding it there as he pressed his cheek to the top of my head. “We’re back home.”

After a minute or so, as my crying calmed as he held me, suddenly, he took my hand. “Come here,” he said, turning and leading me back through the people packed square again. I followed him through my tear-blurred vision.

Instead of heading directly for the Pop’s tent, where the rowdy crowd still was in the front of it, we began making a wide arc to the side of it. When we reached the back of the stand, which was empty, with no one back here and was covered by a large plastic tarp, Brick pulled me into the shade that the tent had provided. “There,” he said, pulling me against him again with satisfaction. “Shade _and_ privacy.”

I slumped into him again in relief as his arms wrapped around me again. Then I reached up with one of my hands that grasped his face, touching his eyebrow scar with my thumb, smoothing it over and over, a fresh set of tears rolling down my cheeks. I wanted to kiss it, but he was too dang tall for me to reach his eyebrow with my lips, even on my tip toes. “How could I ever have forgotten you?” I asked him, sniffing deeply. “How could I? And for so long?”

“I don’t know how I could have either,” Brick said to me, frowning and shaking his head. “And I’m sorry. But we just weren’t ourselves for a while. We had to adjust to this new crazy life.”

There was so much I wanted to say, I didn’t know where to begin. “When did you start to remember me? Why didn’t you tell me? Maybe if you had told me, I would’ve remembered sooner. Maybe it would’ve…” I trailed off, sighing. I didn’t know that, not for sure. After all, I had gone as far as deleting him from my phone contacts. I had been set on never speaking to him ever again.

Brick brushed some of my hair back. It probably looked crazy windblown from all the flying I’d been doing. “I did a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t sure if you remembered me yet, so I’ve waited until you came to me first. I wanted to tell you so bad, but I didn’t want to scare you off. I mean, for all I knew, you still saw me as an old childhood nemesis. That’s how I saw you at first. It was so weird.”

“I know,” I said nodding my head in agreement.

He continued eyes distant as he looked past me at nothing in particular, “For the past few months, I’d been wandering, talking to Professor. My brothers and I only had him for guidance…we didn’t remember you guys, and there was nothing else to do but adjust to the new apartment the city had given to us and get used to our new powers. And then one day it finally came to me. I remembered it all.” His eyes locked with mine again, gazing lovingly down at me. “I told you I would always come back to you.”

“I remember.” I gazed at him too. I remembered that night he’d told me that. The night of our first time, on a hospital bed of all places. “You were right.”

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’re here. I missed this face.” He cupped my face in both his hands, then lightly pinched both cheeks between both sets of his thumbs and pointer fingers. “I missed these cheeks.”

I laughed. “Ow,” I said teasingly, still smiling.

He immediately let go, stroking my cheeks with his thumbs instead, laughing also. “Sorry.” Then something seemed to occur to him, and he said, “Hey, wait. Aren’t you supposed to be down at the courthouse right now? For the Princess trial?”

I wasn’t surprised in the slightest that he’d already known about it. “I was,” I said. Then, subdued, I grinned. “We won the case. She got 40 years.”

Brick’s eyes grew wide. “40 years?” He blew out a breath. “Damn. So she really did create those monsters we fought.”

Nodding, I said, “It was the craziest thing, Brick—she went onto the stand admitted to all of it.” I frowned. “It was like she wanted to get caught this time. She looked like she’d just…given up.”

He considered this for a few moments, pensive. “Maybe she’d gotten tired,” he said finally. It surprised me. “It’s difficult to maintain a villain career like that for so long. Maybe she just decided to throw in the towel and be done with it.”

I thought about this, thinking about how she had looked up there on that stand. Then I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I admitted. Deciding to change the subject, I looked up at him again, poking him in the chest. “You know, I heard you.”

“What?” My rapid change in the subject had thrown him off.

“’You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars,’” I recited. My face grew serious again. “When I was all alone, in the darkness. I heard your voice. I heard you reading my favorite books to me and whispering my name. I heard you crying.” Those were the most important memories at all, the memories I couldn’t believe had evaded me for so long.

Maybe it was a miracle that I could even remember anything from that time in the painless star ocean, imagined or not. But I remembered it like a dream—one long, uninterrupted dream. I remembered flashes of it, his voice. Foggy but still there.

Vulnerable, Brick’s face had unraveled, pain clear in his eyes. He whispered, “I knew it. I knew you could.” Pain was in his voice, too. It felt taboo, almost, bringing up this time. I knew for certain that it always would be. But I had to tell him that. He had to know.

I thought of the night of our first time again, the things he’d confessed to me. His struggles and his fears. And then I knew that there was something else that he needed to know.

“You’re not bad inside, Brick. I know you’re scared that you are, but you aren’t,” I told him, stark serious. Someone that was bad could never love the way that he did. “Look at all of the ways you’ve chosen to be good. _That_ is good. Who you are is about the choices you make.” I reached up, taking a lock of his hair between my fingers, playing with it. I could feel him stare at me. “And I know you’ve done things in the past that you may always be haunted by. But I have, too. Just because I’m a hero, it doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I’m not perfect.” I looked up at him. “I know you’re not perfect, either. But even with your flaws, you’re perfect to me. Because you’re _you_. And there is no one else that has ever existed who is more perfect for me than you are. I accept your past because it influenced who you are now. I accept all of you. I hope you know that.”

He had become quiet, listening to everything I was saying and watching me. Then, in a low voice, he said, “I do now.” His hands smoothed up and down my back. “Thank you.”

I buried my face in his chest again, sighing in relief at getting all of that off of my chest. His hair tickled the sides of my face. Silence passed between us for a few long moments, comfortable, safe. I was so glad to just _be_ here with him, surrounded by him. Smelling him and listening to the sound of his voice. Something I might’ve never had again if my stupid memories hadn’t returned to me.

My voice came out muffled when I spoke. “What if I had never remembered you, Brick? What if you hadn’t remembered me? What if I’d gone the rest of my life never knowing you?” I peeked up at him again, my voice trembling.

Things could have so easily been so different. They almost were. I was so prepared to just…throw him away. It scared me that an entire, vital part of my life could be so dependent on fragile memories.

Instead of returning my fear, though, Brick shook his head. He smiled broadly in an almost cocky manner, and said, “I’d like to think we would’ve met again somehow. In a different context, maybe. I would have had to finally stop being such a dick.” He paused as I laughed heartily into his t-shirt, relieving some of the intensity. He was always able to make me laugh at the perfect moments. He went on, “And you definitely would’ve had to warm up to me again. Both of us would have to be a little less stubborn.” He chuckled, brushing some more loose hairs out of my face gently. “But eventually we would’ve fallen in love all over again.”

A small smile spread my lips. “You think?”

“Of course,” he said with absolute certainty. He leaned his face down closer to mine. Our noses brushed. “Or do you doubt it?”

I paused, pretending to think about it. Then, slowly, my smile became wider as I said, “No. I don’t doubt it.”

“Oh, well,” he said, shifting on his feet, “since _you_ think that, then I must really be right.”

“Know-it-all,” I said, wrinkling my nose at him.

“Curmudgeon,” he said. I threw my head back, laughing again in surprise and delight. He ducked his face toward me again, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, my nose.

And then both his hands came up to hold the back of my neck, pulling my face to his and kissing my mouth—kissing it again, and again, and again. Inside I soared, and the whole galaxy detonated into shards and stardust. In the center of it all was the two of us, intertwined, powerful. Eternal chaos.

I broke away from him, dizzy and needing to catch my breath, my arms tightening around him. “Brick Jojo, I’m going to love you forever.”

Brick lifted one eyebrow, a simper on his lips. “You bet your sweet ass you will.”

The two of us decided to leave the town square to go find our teammates, and so after Brick told his supervisor he was done for the day, the two of us began to walk away, hand in hand, in no hurry. But when we reached the middle of the square, which was relatively cleared of people, I stopped him, getting one last idea.

Reaching to my ear, surprised and pleased that the dandelion had stayed there throughout all of the wind as I’d flown around town, I removed it, having to untangle it from my hair. I held it in front of his face. “Here,” I said.

Slightly confused, he looked down at it, a little cross-eyed from it being so close to him. “Are you giving me a weed?” he asked.

“It’s not just a _weed_. It’s a gift. It was given to me earlier today, before I went into the courthouse,” I told him, holding it lower and looking down at it fondly. “But I’d like to think of it as a symbol.”

Brick looked down at it again. “A symbol of what?” he asked in a soft voice.

I glanced back up at him, then I reached up to tuck the little yellow flower behind his left ear, just like I’d had it in my hair. It peeked through his locks of red perfectly. It was so long now. Almost as long as it had been in high school before he’d cut it. “New beginnings,” I answered.

Brick reached up with one hand to gingerly touch the flower behind his ear, then he smiled at me. “I like the sound of that.” I smiled. He bent down again, tilting my chin up and meeting my lips once more—but not before quipping playfully, “Get back over here.”

Laughing against his mouth, we kissed in the middle of the town square, the high afternoon sun beating down on our heads.

The crowds around us, which we had completely forgotten about, broke into applause, and we only broke apart for a moment to laugh in embarrassment. I covered my face with my hand.

We waited until people kept moving, not clapping anymore or drawing any extra attention to us. And then we looked at each other. I returned my hand to his shoulder, twirling around a lock of hair.

Quiet and calm again, Brick’s eyes met mine. Earnest. Tender. “Blossom Utonium, you have always been my whole world,” he said. “And you always will be.” His fingers tightened on my waist, holding me tight against him so that we were one. I ached. Harmonious pain. I wanted this forever. And now I would do anything so that I would—at least as close to forever as we could manage.

But was it greedy to want him for longer than that? What was longer than forever?

As if no one were around us, as if we were the only two people left on the planet, he leaned back in, touching his forehead against mine before moving his lips against mine. Slow, burning. Savoring as I fell apart beneath his touch, holding onto him and letting him softly destroy me and put me back together again. And then even in a crowd of strangers, it all fell away, and we _were_ alone. Alone together.

My person and I. The one who was made for me. The one who I could not feasibly exist without.

Home.

#

Our lives were on-track to getting back to the new normal—truly normal.

Normal for us, so to speak. Because we would never truly be normal, whatever that was. And that was pretty great.

We spent the rest of that summer rediscovering what had made the six of us what we were, and what we had loved so dearly about our lives before they blew apart—and we learned how to bring all that love into the after.

Progress and healing still wasn’t always smooth, because it would never be. But it was easier together. It was easier knowing that all we wanted and needed was right in our hands. We had each other. And yes, as cliché as that sounds, honestly? It was all we could ever truly ask for.

And so, just as so many things had over the course of the existence of humanity and of nature itself, we would start over.

We had received a second chance, and now it was time to grow again.

It was time to flourish. To love with no regrets or limits. Laugh at ourselves and laugh with others. Dream of anything our hearts could wish for. Work hard for what we knew we deserved. Let ourselves hurt and feel angry—but not for too long. Be vulnerable. Not to be afraid, or to let fear paralyze us, but to have courage. Make mistakes. Fail in small ways. Fail in huge ways. And forgive ourselves when we did.

Try— _always_ try.

Live.


	23. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

**-Blossom’s POV, 5 years later-**

The very unwelcome sound of my ringtone rang out in the previously quiet bedroom. Half between sleep and waking, the both of us groaned, shifting and trying to block out the noise.

As a part-time intern at Townsville’s renowned Biomedical Research Institute, as well as a grad student at University of Townsville part-time, it went without saying that sleep did not come to me easily. Especially considering I had stayed at the lab past midnight last night. And I resented that my precious sleep was being taken from me.

After about the fourth time my phone started to ring, a hand squeezed my waist, jolting me straight into consciousness. I grunted in protest.

“Bloss,” Brick’s husky half-asleep half-awake voice was in my ear. Not unwelcome whatsoever. “Answer phone.”

“Mmmnnnn,” I tried, my voice not coming out the way I wanted it to. I tried again. “No,” I said successfully this time.

“Bloss,” Brick said again, pleading.

“ _No_ ,” I said, burying my face into my pillow. The phone stopped ringing for about a minute. The both of us sighed in relief.

And then it began ringing for the fifth consecutive time. We groaned.

“Blossom, I beg of you,” Brick said to me, sitting up slightly and sounding a little more awake. “Your phone is two seconds from being burnt to charred metal. I’m serious.”

Groaning again, with all my might, I heaved myself up from the pillow and blanket haven of our king-sized bed and picked up my phone grouchily, flopping back down onto my pillow. I answered the call with bleary eyes without bothering to check who was blowing up my phone at 6 AM on a Saturday morning. “Yeah?” I shot out as soon as I answered, my eyes shutting.

“Blossom!” Bubbles’ voice burst through the receiver at a volume that jangled my nerves and made my eyes snap open again. “Why weren’t you answering your phone? I’ve been trying to call you! Butch and Boomer have, too!”

“Sleep,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes with my free hand. “A natural process that every living being does nightly as a means to recharge. Perhaps you should try it.” I felt Brick slink closer to me on the bed, and he wrapped his arm across me as his face buried into the nook of my neck, sighing. The stubble on his cheek and chin brushed against my skin pleasantly, and his warmth, along with the steady beat of his heart against me, helped ease my irritation. I stroked his hair back from his forehead as I always did when we cuddled.

“Blossom, it’s Buttercup!” Bubbles yelled into my ear. “She won’t stop throwing up!”

A spike of fear went through my middle, adrenaline waking my brain with a slap. I jolted and sat up, knocking Brick’s arm off of me. “Is she…sick?” I asked, panic flooding my voice all at once. Brick sat up next to me in bed like someone had thrown cold water on him.

“We don’t know! Blossom, Boomer and I are on our way to Professor’s house to see her. You guys should get over there, too. Quick. She needs us.”

Fight or flight had kicked in hard, and my hands were shaking. “Okay,” I said quietly first, distress constricting my throat, then I said louder, “Okay!”

Bubbles hung up, and I flung my phone to the floor, jumping from the bed. Having heard Bubbles’ voice on the call, Brick scrambled off the bed, too.

“We have to go. Right now,” I said to him, throwing open a clothes drawer, searching for a shirt I could throw on. I found my white t-shirt that said ‘Warner University Grad’ on it in orange letters, and I decided to settle for that, tossing it onto the bed as I yanked my nightgown over my head at the same time. “Get dressed!” I told him, my voice muffled by fabric as I pulled on the t-shirt.

“I heard! I am!” Brick said, already stripping off his favorite t-shirt to sleep in that had ‘ARMSTRONG’ across it, along with cartoony caricatures of both Louie Armstrong and Niel Armstrong, heroes of two things he loved—swing music and space travel. Shirtless, looking through one of his shirt drawers for a fresh one, he asked me, buried worry in his tone, “Do you think…?” He trailed off, already knowing I was thinking the same as him.

Finishing putting my hair up into a messy ponytail with a hair tie I’d had around my wrist, I dropped to my knees in front of the chest of drawers. “Oh God,” I lamented, yanking open my drawer with jeans and sweatpants in it. I pulled out the first pair of jeans I saw. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

“We don’t know yet,” Brick told me as I sat on the edge of our bed, putting my legs into my pants. “We don’t know….it might not be…” he trailed off again. His wavering reassurances were not helping me feel better.

“Not again. No, no, no. This can’t be happening again, this can’t be happening.” I stood again and yanked on the tops of my jeans, tugging them up with the belt loops and hurriedly zipping and buttoning them. “It’s been five years now with no problems. Chemical Y can’t have degraded, right? Not already!”

“Do you feel okay?” Brick asked me after tugging one of his favorite burgundy sweatshirts over his head. As he pulled the collar down, some strands of his hair stood up with static electricity.

I rushed across our bedroom, swinging open the closet door to get to my shoes and jackets. “I mean, not currently! But I was just fine before the phone call. I think. Even though I was asleep.” I paused, putting my hand against my forehead as I halfway thrust my feet into a pair of ballet flats. “I don’t have a headache.”

Brick seemed reassured by this. “Did Bubbles say anything about feeling sick, too? She didn’t, right?” He stepped into a pair of jeans as he asked.

I stopped, my mind wheeling back to the phone call. Then I said, “…No. You’re right, she didn’t. She just seemed pretty freaked out about Buttercup. But she didn’t say anything about herself one way or the other, she just wants us to get there.”

“All right, good. Then let’s just try to keep as calm as possible and get there fast.” Brick was sitting on the edge of our bed, shoving on his shoes which were already on his side of the bed.

I left into our walk-in closet. “You’re right, you’re right. God, you’re right. Gotta stay calm. Staying calm. Just need to—” I paused, then shouted, whirling around, “Where the _hell_ is my jacket?”

“Which jacket?”

I was digging through the closet now, rummaging like mad through the section where I had hung up all of our jackets by color. Why, oh why, did we have so many jackets? I shouted to him distractedly, “The pink—The one with pockets, no hood, the one I’ve been wearing all the time latel—God, where the _hell_ did I put it?!”

“Here,” Brick said, suddenly behind me, already fully dressed and holding out both my jacket and my phone to me calmly. I sighed in relief and took them from his hands, and he grabbed my face, kissing my forehead before he told me again, “We’re all right. We’re okay. Calm. Let’s just get there.”

I shoved my right arm through the right sleeve of my jacket as I took a deep breath and then breathed out slowly. “Right. Calm. Got it.”

Brick told me to sit on the edge of the bed again, dropping to his knees so he could fix my shoes, putting the heels of my feet _inside_ of them instead of my feet being on top of the backs of them—it drove him crazy when I did that when I was in a hurry. Half of my pairs of flats and sneakers were bent out of shape from this bad habit of mine.

Then as Brick grabbed his phone from his nightstand, the two of us hurriedly left our apartment, took the elevator down to the lobby, and left our building into the cool morning.

“Mr. and Mrs. Utonium!” Greeted the doorman to our apartment building. He tipped his uniform cap at us. “So early on this Saturday morning! What’s the hurry? Duty calling?”

“Something like that,” I said to him over my shoulder as we left, waving as Brick waved to him also. “See you later, Jamie!”

Since our modest, family-only exchange of vows at the Townsville Courthouse the previous summer, followed by our weeklong trip to Antarctica as our honeymoon, it had taken a while to get used to people addressing us that way instead of just ‘Blossom and Brick’. Additionally, it had taken months before people finally stopped asking Brick why he had taken my last name instead of the other way around.

“It only felt right to become a Utonium instead of staying a Jojo,” he had always responded. And he had always left out the unfortunate fact that his old surname had been borrowed in the first place from one of his creators, who happened to be just a regular chimpanzee now and didn’t even remember him.

The two of us walked further down the sidewalk, away from our building. The sidewalks and street were still somewhat empty, and the sun was barely rising in the sky—the sunrise colored the skyline.

The both of us looked up and down the walkway, making sure the coast was clear to take off. Then, clasping our hands together, Brick and I took off into the sky, deciding flying to my childhood home would be our fastest and surest bet for an emergency.

The public was still none the wiser about Mojo. For all they knew, Mojo had disappeared and never returned—though that wasn’t entirely false either.

The boys had decided that it was better this way, that the public didn’t know the truth. They decided it was better that he kept some modicum of dignity. It was what he would have wanted, they’d said.

Though Mojo had never in any capacity been a proper father figure to them, he still brought them into this world. And it was because of that that they’d had a difficult and confusing mourning period for him. They had never loved him, and Mojo had never loved them, either. But for so long, he was all they had.

They also preferred not to interact with Jojo whenever they visited Professor. It made them uneasy, seeing their creator in such a state. And not being recognized by who was essentially just an animal now.

We made it to the quiet residential street in no time, and we landed on the front lawn in front of Professor’s quiet home.

“Crap,” I said as soon as we reached the red front door. “I just realized I left my key at home.” Somewhere in our apartment sat my neat keyring of the abundance of keys I had accumulated over the years, and among them was the house key I still had for my childhood home—red to match the door. I smacked a hand to my forehead. “In our rush to get here, I forgot it.”

“No worries. You said Bubbles and Boomer were already here, right?” Brick asked, and before I answered, he reached forward to ring the doorbell. Ah. Yes. The doorbell. Of course. In my moment of further panic, I had apparently forgotten about the existence of it altogether.

The next moment, the front door swung open, Bubbles standing on the other side of it. Long light hair in her signature tousled, beachy waves, she was wearing her purple Moriah’s Café apron over her regular clothes. She had likely been getting ready for work when she’d been alerted about Buttercup. “You’re here!” She exclaimed, stepping back from the doorway so that we could enter. “That was fast. Thank God.”

Brick walked inside first, and as I came in after him, I was enfolded into a relieved hug by my sister, the bangle bracelets on her wrists colliding with each other and making tinkering noises. I hugged her back tightly. “Of course. We rushed over as quick as we could,” I told her, leaning back from our hug to look her in the face. “How is she?” I asked.

With a sigh, Bubbles responded, “She’s been between Professor’s lab and the bathroom for the past couple hours now. He’s running tests and trying to figure out what’s wrong. She’s absolutely miserable.” Her eyes were worried, of course, but her grin showed that she was trying to stay optimistic. As usual, her makeup was perfect, which reminded me that I didn’t have any on. Even when she was worried she looked amazing, and exactly as young and fresh-faced as she was in her teen years.

One could almost say she wasn’t aging at all, even though she had been working her butt off to become co-manager at Moriah’s Café ever since she started working there our second year of college. That place wouldn’t be the same without her and her amazing recipes—especially from her huge exposure as a popular baking blogger.

“Let’s just try to remain calm,” I told her, echoing Brick’s previous statements to me before we’d left. “Worrying over her won’t help Professor figure out what’s wrong.” I grabbed her left hand, leading her over with me to sit on the couch. “Let’s sit down.” Pointedly, I lifted her hand, letting the sizable ring on her ring finger glint in the overhead light, and joked, “So you can give your hand a rest from all this heavy lifting.”

Her expression lightened as she actually laughed. “Oh, stop.” Then she turned to the other side of the room, where Brick was standing with Boomer. She interrupted their low conversation as she said to him, “Did you hear that, honey? Your ring was complimented for the billionth time.”

It was ornate but gorgeous. It had three stones—a princess cut aquamarine with a smaller white diamond on each side of it, in a white gold band with butterflies carved into it. A total princess ring. I did love it on her because it fit her perfectly, but I loved my own ring even more—a teardrop cut pink diamond on a simple single rose gold band. It was more me.

Ever since Boomer _officially_ proposed seven months ago, though they had discussed and planned getting married for years, Bubbles hadn’t stopped gushing about the dream ring the love of her life had designed himself to anybody who would listen.

Boomer, with most of his jaw length light hair stuffed back into a blue beanie, although some strands managed to spill out on the sides, turned toward us. “Hey, thanks, Bloss!” He said to me with a half wave. “I never get tired of hearing that.”

He looked as worried as Bubbles did, though both of them tried to conceal it in the same way—a grin was on his face, too, although it was strained. Also just like Bubbles, there was no sign of any aging on his features whatsoever. He looked like a teenager still. Perhaps it was just that I was used to seeing him all the time, but Brick didn’t seem to be aging either, at least not like our human ex-classmates and co-workers were.

It was peculiar.

Being back in this living room again after a while felt so strange. Every time I came here these days, it reminded me of the time when we were confined to this place like a prison, when this house was all that was left of our world. But as always, I tried to swallow the bad memories back.

That wasn’t how I wanted to remember my childhood home. I wanted it to remind me of only the good times.

Smiling slightly at Boomer, I gestured down at his hand as Bubbles and I sat side by side on the couch. “Just come from your studio?”

He looked down at his own fingers, which were smudged with charcoal and pastels. “Oh,” he chuckled slightly. “Yeah, I was working on some commissions. But when Bubbles called I left immediately, didn’t have time to wash my hands.”

“There should be some antibacterial soap by the sink in the kitchen,” I told him.

Nodding in thanks, Boomer turned to leave to the kitchen, and Brick sent me a reassuring smile before he left with him. When the two disappeared through the kitchen entryway, I turned to Bubbles. She had watched them leave, too.

Wanting to keep conversation light for now, at least until we would get an update on Buttercup, I asked her, “So, how are the wedding plans coming along? You need any help with anything yet?”

Bubbles sighed, weary. “Actually, I got the budget and the guest list worked out. I’ve also planned out the details of the cake.” One of the first things Bubbles had planned for the wedding was that she would bake their wedding cake. “But now I need to find a dress, and figure out catering, videographer, photographer—and oh geez, the _florists!_ Do you have any idea how many florists I need to hire? There needs to be flowers _everywhere!_ And where the heck am I going to find a horse-drawn carriage?”

She and Boomer were, of _course_ , having a big, beautiful fairytale wedding. But when she had decided to plan everything herself instead of hiring a wedding planner, I don’t think she had considered just how much work went into planning big, beautiful weddings. And I just knew she would need my organization and planning skills eventually.

I took her hand again. “I told you I’d be here when you need me,” I reminded her, giving her a reassuring smile. “I’ll help with all the hiring. I’ll make sure everything goes smoothly.”

She let out a breath. “Thanks, Bloss. That’s such a relief.”

“And Buttercup and I will come with you to find your dress,” I said. Then my stomach shifted at what I’d said. I saw a similar look of discomfort spread on Bubbles’ face. I tightened my grip on her hand. “We will.”

The fear had come back to Bubbles’ face full force, and this time she didn’t try to grin to hide it. “What if she’s sick again, Blossom?” Her voice was small. “What if _we’re_ sick?”

Shaking my head, I said, “No. Don’t say that. I’m sure Buttercup will be fine.” But even as I’d said that I couldn’t ignore the way I churned inside.

Boomer and Brick returned to the living room, and they came over to sit with us on the couch. The four of us fell silent. And when we had been sitting there quietly for a few minutes, suddenly, the sound of a door opening filled the space.

The basement door had opened, and three pairs of footsteps came through. “Easy, easy. Not too fast,” came a voice. Butch’s voice. “Don’t wanna get dizzy again, do you?”

“All right, all right.” Buttercup. My heart flew up into my throat.

Buttercup, with Professor steadying her at her side and Butch behind her, appeared in the kitchen doorway. I held my breath at her appearance. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were glassy, lips pressed together hard. But even looking as relatively rough as she did, she was still young looking, as was Butch, even with the scruffy almost-beard look that he was trying out currently. Wasn’t a huge fan of it, personally.

She looked up from her feet, seeing all of us sitting in the living room, and a weak wry smile came onto her face. “Welcome to the party,” she said, her voice rough.

Butch groaned at her attempt at a joke, but he waved at us, half distracted. “Hey guys, thanks for coming.”

The four of us stayed quiet, tension flooding the room. Then I was the one to speak first. “How are you?” I asked Buttercup, knowing she wasn’t well but feeling the need to ask anyway.

She grunted as Professor helped her sit in the armchair, one of Professor’s recent additions to the room. “Been better,” she said. She paused warily before she asked me, “You?”

I knew what she was asking. She wanted to make sure we weren’t feeling sick like she was. Bubbles and I exchanged a look, and then I answered, “We’re feeling okay. But we’re worried about you.”

“So it’s just me puking like it’s my job,” Buttercup said, nodding with bitter acceptance. “Fantastic.” Butch rested a hand on top of her head. Her hair was still in her pixie haircut. It turned out she had taken a strong liking to it five years ago and kept it up ever since. She liked that she didn’t have to tie it up while she instructed part time at her Wing Chun dojo.

Professor said, “I’m finishing running Buttercup’s blood test, it shouldn’t be too long now. And now I have to test both of your vitals, just to be sure,” he said to Bubbles and me, looking at us with a worried frown. “I know you don’t currently feel any negative symptoms, but we can’t be too careful.”

The two of us nodded. “Of course,” Bubbles said.

As we remained sitting on the couch, Professor checked our blood pressure, listened to our hearts, and look a sample of saliva from each of us to test down in his lab, and he was gone down to the lab again. I tried very hard not to think of how this reminded me so vividly of our darkest days. The room was silent until Butch spoke up.

“So,” he said, nodding toward Brick and I, “how are the old married couple doing? Still the image of marital bliss?”

I appreciated him bringing up a subject that felt easy to talk about, to distract us all from what we were inevitably thinking of. I glanced over at Brick, a quiet grin on my lips. He grinned back at me. “Yup,” said Brick proudly.

Buttercup shook her head, pretending to sneer at us. “Disgusting,” she said.

“Hey, now,” I said, pointing at her. “Just because _some people_ don’t believe in marriage doesn’t mean it’s not perfect for others.” I leaned my face on Brick’s shoulder. “Right, sweetie?” Brick smirked and leaned in to kiss me on the tip of my nose.

“Yeah, yeah. Enjoy your piece of paper the government gave you,” Butch said, though he was smiling. Then he leaned down, wrapping his arms around Buttercup’s shoulders lightly. “ _Some_ of us don’t need it.”

Buttercup tilted her head back slightly, looking up at him as she nodded. Then she picked up his left hand, bit it, and said, “Mine.”

“Wait ‘til you see our wedding,” Bubbles said to them, reaching over to squeeze Boomer’s knee.

Boomer, stretching his arm across her shoulders, added in agreement, “Our _perfect_ wedding.”

Bubbles looked at Buttercup, shrugging a shoulder. “You might change your mind.”

“Not likely,” Buttercup replied, lifting an eyebrow. I believed her. It took a lot for Buttercup to change her mind about _anything,_ and I definitely didn’t think that she and Butch would be rushing to walk down the aisle when they firmly believed it was just a social construct.

A few minutes later, as we’d continued talking about things—happier things, like Butch’s stories that surrounded the other mechanics he worked with part-time, or Brick’s adventures in grad school to become a part-time university professor himself—Professor ran up the stairs, through the kitchen and returning to the living room. It was quiet in an instant as we all took in his sudden rushed reappearance.

“What is it?” I asked Professor as he bent over to catch his breath. He looked…enthused about something. Certainly not worried, as he had looked before.

Still breathing hard, Professor answered me. “I finished running the blood test. And, well, Buttercup. I don’t know how you’ll receive this news…but, in my opinion, it’s good news. Very good news.” Behind him, Jojo ambled through the kitchen from the basement door, pausing to stare at all of us from the kitchen entryway.

Buttercup sat up straighter in the armchair, face becoming hopeful. “I’m not dying?”

“Even better.” Professor was smiling. Jojo came over to his side, then sat on the floor, observing the room.

Buttercup was confused now. Her face scrunched up as she asked, “What is that supposed to mean?”

Professor had a light to his eyes that looked suspiciously like restrained joy. I wondered why he looked like that…then immediately found out why. “Buttercup, it looks like you’ll be eating breakfast burritos, burgers and pizza for two now.”

All six of us had frozen up, speechlessness ambushing us once again, this time for completely opposite reasons.

Butch was the only one who dared respond first to such a shocking revelation. His voice was thin. “…Excuse me?”

Professor went on jovially, as if not even noticing any of our reactions. “Indeed, I’m surprised that she’s only just showing symptoms after two months. But I suspect she’ll be having them more frequently from now on.”

“Oh my God,” Bubbles whispered, a hand coming up to cover her mouth.

Professor said, “Butch, I expect you’ll be a good father. Although it would be good if you didn’t spoil your child the way you spoil Buttercup. But to each their own, I suppose.”

Both my hands had been covering my mouth, and slowly, I moved them to my heart so that I could speak clearly. “Professor…” I trailed off, disbelief coloring my tone. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Professor kept going, his face practically glowing with joy by now. “I suppose Chemical Y does allow a better environment for life, just as we—just as I had hoped. I am so thrilled. I’m going to be a grandpapa!” He clasped his hands together in front of him with a clap.

“Buttercup?” Bubbles’ voice was filled with restrained joy just as Professor’s voice had been. She had come off of the couch and was squatted down in front of Buttercup, where she remained frozen sitting, staring blankly ahead at the wall. “Are you okay?”

“She’s just staring.” Boomer pointed out, staring down at her too. “Is she even breathing?”

“Yeah,” I said, cringing in sympathy. “She’s just shocked, I think.” Then, something occurring to me suddenly, I dug into my pocket for my phone.

Brick asked, looking equal parts concerned and amused as he gazed at his brother, who was also frozen and staring, “What about Butch? He’s not saying anything else.”

“Guys? Hey, guys!” Boomer waved his hands in front of Butch’s face, then turned to wave his hands in front of Buttercup’s face. Neither of them even flinched. “Guys. Blink twice if you haven’t blacked out with your eyes open.”

“Oh my God. Babe,” Brick started, suddenly turning to me.

I held up a finger, already typing on my phone with one hand. “On it. Texting my gyno about birth control as we speak. And, _send,_ ” I said as I hit send.

Brick sighed, gripping his own forehead. “Thank God.” We may have been the only ‘old married couple’ of the group thus far, but we were certainly not ready for babies, at least not until grad school was behind us both. Especially now that we knew that they were now _possible._

Professor interrupted all of our bewildered reactions. “Of course, Buttercup, if you’re not ready for this kind of responsibility…or, of course, don’t _want_ it…I would oblige.” All of us had sobered instantly, and from his face, I could tell it pained him to even mention this. “If you decide you want to terminate it, I wouldn’t blame you nor stand in your way.”

“…No.”

Startled, and even more shocked, we all stared at Buttercup, who had finally spoken. “Buttercup?” I was the only one who responded to her.

She had both hands pressed to her lower abdomen, staring up at Professor with a look of determination, eyes narrowed like she was in full-on battle warrior mode. “No,” she said again. Her tone said that there would be no arguments, no changing her mind. “I…I want it. I want to keep it.”

Silence echoed momentarily as we all processed this, taking in what this meant for her, for Butch, for _all_ of us. Then the rest of us were standing, animated and thrilled.

Bubbles covered her mouth with her hands as her eyes glistened. “Oh, Buttercup!” she cried. She looked over the moon to be an auntie already.

Professor’s smile had returned now, and completely unreserved—he was beaming. I rushed over to the armchair and bent toward my sister, hugging my arms around Buttercup’s shoulders briefly, trying to contain myself.

I had to decide what kind of auntie I would be. Bubbles would almost certainly be the overbearing, baby-voiced, face-pinching auntie. Maybe I would be the auntie that read literature to the baby so that it would form a developed vocabulary and healthy love for books.

Butch had finally unfrozen, at first swaying between each foot as if he were about to fall over, and then he dropped heavily to his knees at Buttercup’s feet. He looked terrified, staring up at her. Buttercup stared back at him, saying nothing and appearing unsure for a moment. Then Butch reached for one of Buttercup’s hands, enfolding it in both of his tightly and pressing a kiss on her knuckles.

“Okay,” he said finally, in a tender voice. The way that he gazed up into her face in this moment made me positive that he would, without a single doubt, follow her to the ends of the Earth if she asked him to. He nodded ever so slightly, whispering this time, “Okay.”

Buttercup had mirrored his terror at first. But at his affirmation that he wanted this too, and that he would be ready if she was, her fear faded—first into soft surprise, then her eyes softened, and surprise turned into a rare public show of the deep devotion she held for him, that she would always have. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said, breathless.

He smiled. She smiled.

Abruptly interrupting the moment they were having, she jolted, the hand she had on her abdomen coming up to clutch her stomach. “Oh, God. It’s happening again,” she yelled. “ _Hurl, hurl, hurl!_ ”

Butch let go of her hand, scrambling to get up and fly to the kitchen as he shouted, “I’ll get the bucket!”

Sometime later, after Buttercup stopped throwing up again, after all our excited talk faded and after Professor railed off a long, detailed list of This-Is-Not-Allowed-During-Pregnancy things, which he had apparently already prepared long ago just in case, he proceeded to give the 25-page long guide to Butch, entrusting it to him.

And that was when all 6 of our hotline notifications went off on our phones.

There was an organized robbery happening downtown.

All six of us rushed out of the front door, preparing to take off—though not before Professor instructed Buttercup not to fight too recklessly for the sake of the baby, resulting in her groaning in annoyance.

Butch wrapped his arms around her from behind as they walked, leaning down over her shoulder to kiss her cheek. Bubbles laughed, grabbed Boomer’s hand, and then reached over with her free hand to affectionately pat our sister’s stomach, which of course didn’t have a bump yet, but would grow one in the coming months. I hoped for Buttercup’s sake that the baby wouldn’t be a kicker.

As we stepped into the front lawn, I grabbed Brick’s arm. He glanced back at me, a look of question in his eyes. I squeezed his forearm. “Just a sec,” I told him. I rushed back through the door to find Professor perched on the arm of the couch, looking misty-eyed, just as I knew he would be.

He looked up to see me re-entering the house, and before he could fully form the question caught in his throat, I flew to him and gently threw my arms around his neck, hugging him. “Congratulations, Grandpa Professor,” I said in his ear. I pulled back slightly, looking at him and beaming. “Or do you prefer grandpappy? Grandpapa?”

His tears had fallen as he laughed, hugging me back briefly. “I’m not sure yet. I suppose I have around seven months to decide which one I like best.” He pulled out of our embrace. Despite the tears, he was practically glowing. “Thank you, sweetheart.” He stepped back, grinning at me and making a shooing motion with his hand. “Now, go ahead. Our city needs you.”

“We’ll make you proud,” I said as I began to back away.

Softly, he responded, voice catching, “I’m always proud.”

I smiled, turning and walking back through the front door.

Buttercup, Butch, Bubbles, and Boomer had gone ahead, but Brick was still waiting there for me, face patient, but eyes quizzical. The wind was blowing slightly now—it wasn’t natural wind, I realized. It was air stirred up from the distant battle. It blew long tendrils of his hair into his face, tiny strands getting caught in the sunlight and glowing. My heart clenched in the way that it sometimes did when I looked at him—when I saw him sleeping with drool on his chin, or laughing at his favorite movies, or frowning in concentration as he read and I couldn’t believe how much I cherished him, how lucky I was.

Not ready for babies yet, certainly. Our current non-existent sleep cycles would thank us for that. But one day?

Absolutely.

And I would love them just as unquestioningly and as unconditionally.

He tilted his head at me, noticing my stare. “Everything good?” he asked me, a corner of his mouth lifting. He reached toward me for my hand.

I stretched my arm out, taking his hand in mine, our fingers lacing together and finding home. I nodded as I said to him, “Let’s go. I’m sure the others are wondering where we are.”

He grinned, nodding back at me. Then he inclined his head forward, half bowing. “Lead the way, m’lady.”

I laughed, leaning in to kiss him just because.

The next moment, we took off into the air, and before we were out of full sight of the house, I glanced back at our front yard. Professor was standing on the front steps, holding hands with Jojo, and waving with his other hand as he watched us leave with pride.

Jojo watched us, too. Who knew what he could possibly be thinking. Sometimes when I looked at the chimp, I wondered if there were any lingering Mojo thoughts inside of that brain of his. I guess we would never know.

We soon arrived at the scene of the crime, and we jumped into battle seamlessly, and in conjunction, we worked for justice, safety, and light. We worked for the sake of goodness, just as we always would. My sisters and I, and he and his brothers.

Three of us, three of them. Forever.

Six of a kind we would always be.

Knowing that the day would once again be saved. As always and until the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

“ _The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost._ ”  _-Gilbert Keith Chesterton_

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_**the end** _

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ready for my sappy, huge author’s note? Here it comes! (This a/n is the copypasta'd abridged version of the one I posted on FFN.)
> 
> I’ve put my heart and soul into this story. Writing this story fulfilled me unlike anything else I’ve ever written so far. I owe so much to this story, and to these characters. From first starting Hard to Control Myself, to ending this companion story now as an adult, it’s been 10 years. Isn’t that insane? A whole decade. That’s such a long time. These versions—my versions—of the PPG and RRB have been in my head for so long, livin’ it up, delivering clever one-liners and having dramatic arguments and makeout sessions. 
> 
> These girls and boys feel like my children. I’ve given them 2 full chaptered stories, and given each of their individual stories all that I’ve got. And now, with the ending of this story, I release them. And I will now bow out into fanfic semi-retirement.  
> Losing Control is my very last chaptered fanfic. For good.
> 
> Fret not! I’ll be sticking around. If ya’ll miss me, I’ll always be ranting and typing away on my livejournal about the things I’m working on! Something tells me that I may even contribute some one-shot stories once in a while, for PPG or other fandoms. 
> 
> It’s just that chaptered fanfiction is so demanding, emotion-wise and time-wise, and I would like to devote most of my time and dedication to my multiple original novel-length stories from now on. They’ve been somewhat neglected, and I’d like to give them everything I’ve got now. (Also, now I’ll actually have time to, ahem, regularly read fanfiction again. Hooray! So many great stories out there, and I really need to catch up on As Time Goes By. Hehe.)
> 
> I’ll miss writing the reds, blues, and greens a great deal. I’ve made my peace with this story universe. It is now complete, and there won’t be any continuations to it. But exploring with these characters with some different, separate story lines might be fun, so we’ll see! Fingers crossed, right? 
> 
> Now that I’ve said all that, let me get a little sappier.
> 
> The support that I’ve received for this story has meant a great deal to me. I realize that this story wasn’t typical for me. This story was dark, and strange, and complicated. But it has and will always mean the world to me, and I hope that it was worth the journey for all of you, too.
> 
> Every single one of you that has commented, kudosed, subscribed to, shared and bookmarked this story: Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Your enthusiasm and support for this story means everything. Even those lurkers out there, I see you too! And you are so, so appreciated. I cannot emphasize enough how thankful I am.
> 
> If you’ve enjoyed this story, I would love it if you left some words behind. Even if it’s just a word or two, seeing your responses, no matter what they say, fills me with so much gratitude and happiness, like the Grinch when his heart grows three sizes. Don’t be shy!
> 
> And lastly, but never in any capacity the least: to TeenQueen661, beta reader rock star extraordinaire. My partner in crime throughout the last 6 chapters of this story. We did it! As I told you before, you will do great things in the future. It was an honor to have your input as I finished this crazy story to the end. Thank you so much. Everyone, please give her stories a read if you haven’t already. They’re well written, and they’re imaginative and awesome, just like she is!
> 
> Well, you guys. It’s been real. See you around. Goodbye for now. And as always, thanks for reading.


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